


Mission One

by indigo (indigo_angels)



Series: Mission Arc [7]
Category: The A-Team (2010), The A-Team - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-08 00:03:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17375738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigo_angels/pseuds/indigo
Summary: Hannibal's new team face their very first mission together.





	Mission One

Hannibal chewed thoughtfully on his cigar as he slowly made his way back to the hut that the team had commandeered for their stay. The reason behind their posting to the British COB near Amara had suddenly become very clear following his conversation with General Kilshaw that afternoon. It was an interesting mission, he acknowledged, complex, with a hell of a lot riding on it. Hannibal wished he could have had something a little more – straightforward – for his new team’s first mission, but, hell, when did he ever get what he wished for?

 

He told himself that all would be fine. They’d had six weeks together without a single day off, just training for this first mission, whatever it turned out to be, and Hannibal was satisfied with the progress they’d all made. Note: satisfied, not ecstatic. There were still a few little issues that he would have preferred to have ironed out before they went ‘live’...

 

Murdock could still be a little - unfocussed - at times, but on the positive side, Face was proving himself adept at handling the pilot’s medication and the two of them seemed to be building up a cautious friendship. Then there was BA who seemed to be taking longer than Hannibal had anticipated to get over his initial distaste for Face; not even the lieutenant risking his neck to haul BA back into that chopper in Mexico seemed to sway the corporal’s attitude. Hannibal sighed as he mulled that fact over and reluctantly acknowledged that Face himself was certainly not helping matters along on that front. The kid wasn’t at all stupid and he’d soundly picked up on BA’s opinion of him from minute one. And how did Face react to people who didn’t like him? Well, he obviously tried to piss them off even more than usual. Not helpful.

 

So for this mission, when the whole _team_ needed to work together well, more than well, Hannibal really needed Face to be at the top of his game, he needed him to step up and be the damn fine XO Hannibal knew he could be. But, and here was the rub, if Hannibal knew one thing for sure about his LT and this mission, it was that Face wasn’t going to like it, not one little, tiny bit.

 

x-x

 

He was very careful with his initial briefing to the team. The atmosphere was heavy; when Hannibal told them they were on, you could almost have cut the air with a knife.

 

He noticed BA’s steady resolve as soon as he walked into the room that he’d prepared for the briefing, and he saw the looks of barely suppressed glee that flit between Face and Murdock as they jostled each other to get through the doorway first. But the three of them sat and listened in silence as Hannibal showed them satellite images of the power station they were going to hit and the covert heavy water plant that was hidden within the hydro-electrics operation. He quickly outlined how the heavy water was being used in the manufacture of plutonium-239, a key requirement for nuclear weapons and how the plan was to use the water from the dam to wipe out the heavy water plant and make rebuilding impossible.

 

He got through all of that without a hitch, and was just wondering if he was going to be able to make it right through the plan tonight, before he was asked the question that he had been dreading all along.  

 

“So,” Face mused, leaning over the large scale map spread out on the table in front of him, “Where are we going then, boss? ‘Cause this sure as hell isn’t Iraq.”

 

Hannibal frowned, he had hoped to get further than this before reaching this sticky moment, but he should have known better. How many of his briefings had Face attended now, over the years? Enough to know that Hannibal always told his team _everything_ from the outset. The middle of a mission was no time for surprises, and Hannibal believed in being prepared for every eventuality. So of course Face would notice the complete lack of any reference to ‘where’ in Hannibal’s briefing.

 

He took a deep breath, thinking that perhaps he was over reacting, perhaps this would be just fine, and answered, “Iran.”

 

“IRAN?”

 

Or maybe not. He couldn’t help but wince at Face’s reaction and rubbed his brow thoughtfully, wondering if it would have been better to pull his XO to one side before the briefing and have a quiet word with him in private, but then he looked up at Face’s blanched expression and decided, no, it wouldn’t have made any difference.

 

“Yes, Lieutenant, Iran,” he looked back to his map and tapped a point with one long forefinger, “Okay, so the drop point will be here, ten clicks south-east of-”

 

“I’m not going back into Iran.”

 

Face’s voice was quiet. Deadly. Not the pouty, dramatic voice he saved for his orchestrated histrionics and Hannibal forced back a sigh; he so didn’t want to do this in front of Murdock and BA.

 

“Face,” he looked at him, right in the eyes and felt a sick swoop to his stomach as he recognised the naked fear he saw staring back at him, “Kid,” he tried to put as much reassurance as he could into that one word, “This is different. This will be fine.”

 

Face just seemed to be paling more and more with each passing second. He stabbed a finger accusingly into Hannibal’s chest, “ _That’s_ what you said that time as well!” he hissed. “You promised me Hannibal, fucking _promised_ me, and I’m _not_ going back!”

 

There was an awful second of silence as Hannibal’s mind whirled around how to handle this, but then Face handled it for him by turning and storming out of the room, banging the door forcefully behind him.

 

Hannibal cringed at the thud and turned to look at his two new team members who were staring at him with almost identical expressions of shock. He smiled at them around his cigar as he tried to coax it back into life, “Don’t worry about him,” he nodded at the still swaying door, “We’ve been into Iran before, he didn’t like it much.”

 

They stared back in silence as Hannibal started to pack up his intel. ”I think we’ll leave it there for today, troops,” he told them, “We’ll pick it up again 0800, tomorrow. Dismissed.” He returned to busying himself with the satellite images as Murdock and BA turned and filed out of the room, both of them looking like they were wondering just what the hell they had got themselves into.     

 

x-x

 

Hannibal stayed out of Face’s way for a couple of hours, going over the finer points of the plan in his head and giving the kid chance to calm down. It was pitch black when he finally made his way back to their assigned rooms, two almost empty shells in a prefabricated building at the back corner of the Base. The British COB was much smaller than the other bases they had frequented in Iraq, and the facilities were nowhere near as good; but they had two decent sized rooms and a shared bathroom, and they’d certainly slept in worse places over the years. 

 

Hannibal used the bathroom and poked his head in Murdock and BA’s room to find them laid out on their beds playing cards. No Face, but then he never really expected to see him there. He made polite small talk for a few minutes then excused himself and headed back to the room he shared with his XO.

 

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness as he made out the sleeping arrangements that Face had set up. They’d been provided with real beds, not huge but bigger than army standard cots, with real mattresses and sheets. Relative luxury. Every night so far they had pushed their beds together as they settled in for the night and then pulled them apart again the next morning. Hannibal’s lips twitched in amusement as he noticed that, not only had Face _not_ pushed the beds together tonight, he’d also stacked as much of their gear into the space in between as he possibly could. He shook his head in fond exasperation; the kid was still so much like a child sometimes...

 

He didn’t say a word, knew from the rigid set of his shoulders that Face was still wide awake, but that talking would be pointless at that moment in time. Instead he silently removed all the kit from the space between the two beds and then pushed his bed in, making sure there was no sign of a gap between them. He slid in between the cool sheets and rested his hand on Face’s warm, bare, back.

 

“C’mon, Face,” he edged forward and placed a kiss on the bare nape of a neck. “Don’t do this.”

 

He felt Face stiffen against him and bit back the urge to sigh. He’d known Face a long time, and had become expert at handling him just right; he knew what he needed to do to turn this upset around.

 

He kept his hand on the strong, smooth back and rubbed gentle, wide, warm circles. “Talk to me, kid...” he whispered.

 

Face shifted, he never could resist being touched, being loved like that, and soon he was turned into Hannibal, his eyes reflecting the light coming in under the door, “You promised me Hannibal...” he whispered and he sounded so damn _sad_ that Hannibal felt his heart clench unpleasantly.

 

“Face,” Hannibal’s hand slid into his hair, holding him still and offering comfort, “I never said that we wouldn’t ever go back into Iran. I promised you that _that_ would never happen to you again, that I wouldn’t ever let it happen again... but Iran? It’s got nothing to do with any of it. This is the other side of the country from before, different people, very different situation. It means nothing.”

 

“But if we’re caught again...”

 

Face still sounded miserable, and scared, and Hannibal sighed, “Bad guys are the same the world over, Face. Every time we go up against them we take that risk. The bad guys in Iran are no better or worse than anywhere else.” Face looked away and Hannibal knew his words hadn’t made much of an impact. He tried again, “I promised you that I wouldn’t let you go through something like that again Face, and I swear to you again, I won’t. It doesn’t matter to me if they are Iranians or Americans or Martians. That is not going to happen to us again. Ever. You understand me?”

 

There was a thick silence before Face’s eyes flicked back to him, “You can do that Hannibal?” he breathed, “You can promise me that?”

 

“Yes,” the reply was instant.

 

“No,” Face shook his head. “Don’t promise that Hannibal. Not when you can’t deliver.”

 

Hannibal put his other hand on the opposite side of Face’s head, keeping him still, looking straight into his eyes, “I do promise. And I will deliver.”

 

Face frowned, “But to say that, Hannibal, that denotes some kind of choice _last_ time, that you _chose_ to let it happen? I’m sorry boss; I don’t see that at all.”

 

Hannibal had to pull him in at that point, couldn’t stand to look into his face any longer because that was the whole problem right there. Yes, Hannibal could have stopped it, but he hadn’t. He’d decided that the price to pay for stopping was too high, but he was wrong; the price that _Face_ had paid was too high, and Hannibal would never make that mistake again.

 

“It will be okay,” he whispered instead, holding Face tight against his chest, “It’s just a mission in another country. It could be any country, we won’t see another soul, quick in, quick out.” He felt Face sigh against his skin, “I need you here, Face. I need you to help me with Murdock and BA. It’s their first time out; we need to be a team on this,” he pulled him in tighter, “Please, Face. I need you.”

 

Hannibal counted it out, seven, eight, nine, ten seconds before he felt Face slump against him and the thrill of the victory was tempered by the realisation that his boy, his love, was still scared, still reluctant, was only doing this for him. He felt that guilt hard and prayed to God that he would never regret this conversation.

 

“Thank you,” he whispered, even though Face had never even acknowledged his agreement.

 

He felt the younger man pull away from him and suffered a pang of uncertainty before Face looked him straight in the eye and whispered, “Boss, you’re gonna have to give me a good going over here, otherwise there’s no way I’m gonna be able to sleep...”

 

Hannibal smiled and reached down to pull his boy’s mouth up to his own lips. Oh, yes, that he could certainly do.  

   

__________________

 

The next morning they were back in the briefing room, the shadows around Face’s eyes proof of his lack of sleep, despite Hannibal’s best attempts to relax him. He was stood up against the wall when the others came in, arms folded, lips in a thin line, expression carefully blank, but he managed to crack a smile and a shoulder bump for Murdock when the other came to stand next to him.

 

“Okay,” Hannibal looked around at his team, face serious, but eyes dancing with the edges of what Face knew as the ‘jazz’. “Let’s get this show on the road, then shall we gents?” and Face carefully stowed his emotions away, hoping they would stay that way until they got back.

 

_____________________________

 

It was a thick, humid night when they landed on the banks of the Karun River, ten clicks from their target at the Karkheh Dam. At Hannibal’s nod, Murdock set up a silent guard and BA started unpacking the kayaks they were going to use to get to and from the dam. Hannibal put his hand on Face’s arm as he stowed the last of their chutes away and waited until the kid had looked up at him, his face black with grease, but his eyes shining brightly in the light of the moon. “Alright?” his voice was quiet enough that it wouldn’t drift to the rest of the team.

 

“Yeah.” Face’s reply was about what Hannibal had expected, he knew he was embarrassed by his reaction to yesterday’s bombshell and that he would do whatever he could to be nothing less than professional at all times from now on in – especially around BA.

 

Hannibal nodded, satisfied, and pulled the paddles from his backpack, sliding them silently together, passing them to Face who fitted them through the paddle-keeper bungees on the side of the kayaks.

 

Their progress downstream was swift and silent, two dark green kayaks sliding through the slow moving water like deadly crocodiles and as the first rays of light started to grey the sky, they had their initial glimpse of the dam.

 

“Boss,” Face’s voice carried to Hannibal on a stirring dawn breeze and Hannibal glanced over as the two kayaks drifted closer together, keeping to the tall reeds at the edges of the lake. “You seen that thing? No way it’s big enough for a heavy water plant...” He nodded at the distant dam and all eyes turned make their own opinion.

 

“You never seen the Hoover Dam?” BA asked in response. “That sucka’s much bigger on the other side than what you’d see from the lake.”

 

Face kept his eyes locked on Hannibal. “You remember that time we were in Norway? That heavy water plant we saw there? It’s not gonna fit inside that dam – no way. I don’t care how big it is on the other side.”

 

Behind Hannibal, BA let out a quiet snort of disbelief but it was Murdock that spoke up into the tightening silence. “You know, the plant could be underground, only reachable by a subterranean mono-rail carrying silver egg-like pods.”

 

That casual, poker-faced announcement got both Face and BA’s attention on him, Face almost tipping the shared kayak in his efforts to turn around and stare, but Hannibal only laughed. “Very true, Captain,” he remarked dryly as he slid his paddle silently through the still water. “And the intel seems sound, Face. I don’t suppose they all have to be the size of the one we saw – after all, no one was trying to hide that one.”

 

Face sighed and his eyes were still fixed on the distant line of grey as Murdock pushed them on. “I don’t know...” he admitted. “Who got us the intel? Army intelligence? I don’t know if I trust those guys....”

 

“CIA,” Hannibal told him and Face laughed.

 

“Now – I  _know_  I don’t trust those guys!”

 

“And you’d be right not to...” Murdock muttered, but Face’s next question was cut off by Hannibal’s words.

 

“Right boys, it’s too light for us to go any further like this. Let’s stow the boats and head off on foot.”

 

With one last suspicious look at the dam, Face turned away and helped Murdock to paddle through the gap in the reeds already carved by Hannibal and BA.   

 

________________

 

They hoisted the kayaks high into the canopies of the trees, hoping to keep them from prying eyes and also handy for their trip back to the RV point, then set off on foot Face taking point with the rest of the team silent ghosts behind him.

 

The day slowly crept forward in this way, until, with a few hours to go until nightfall they finally reached the spot where they planned to make their assault on the dam. Face was still quiet, his brow still knotted in concern and Hannibal had followed him with his eyes as he’d taken his cold rations from his pack and volunteered for the first watch. He gave his XO fifteen minutes of solitude, before leaving BA and Murdock back at their rudimentary camp and setting off to track him down.

 

It didn’t take long – all the team had studied the topography of the area carefully and Hannibal guessed that Face would have made for the highest point in order to start his watch. He was right, but didn’t realise it until a large chunk of bark fell on his head from above. He craned his neck and finally saw one very much  _not_  army issue boot and a flat grin staring down at him.

 

“Thought I’d better tell you I was up here,” Face’s disembodied voice announced, “just in case you were planning on having a dump.”   

 

Hannibal chuckled and started hauling himself up the tree. “And I bet there’d be pictures of that all over base within minutes of us getting back if I did, hey, kid?”

 

Face however didn’t laugh. He just extended a hand and helped Hannibal up onto the branch he was sat on before a, “Yeah, if we get back...” slid from his lips.

 

The branch Face was perched on may well have provided a wonderful vista of the surrounding area and distant road from the dam, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable and Hannibal had to shuffle around until he could sit anywhere at all, envying, as always, the ease in which Face seemed to fit inside his body. “Still?” he asked as he finally gave up and eased himself down onto a particularly nobbly bit of bark. “I thought you were feeling better.”

 

Face shrugged and lifted his binoculars to scan their surroundings. “I don’t get it,” he admitted. “None of this op makes any sense to me.”

 

Hannibal leaned back against the trunk. “Tell me,” he invited.

 

It took Face a few minutes and Hannibal was happy to wait. He watched as his sharp blue eyes flicked back and forth through the eyepieces of the field glasses, returning too many times to the distant dam before he finally organised his thoughts enough to share. “Why do we have to blow this dam?” he asked and Hannibal frowned, he’d not been expecting that.

 

“Because it makes heavy water and heavy water is used to produce [plutonium-239](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239) which in turn-”

 

“I know  _that_ ,” Face interrupted. “But I mean, why do we have to blow  _this_  plant? There are heavy water factories all over the world. There’s another one in Iran, right out in the open, in Arak. No one is telling us to blow that up.”

 

Hannibal was impressed, the kid had done his research alright, but none of that mattered. “It’s the fact that this one is so hush-hush,” he explained carefully. “The Iranians even deny its existence, won’t let anyone near it like they do in Arak,” he shrugged. “It’s suspicious to the nth degree, they’re hiding something down there and we need to get rid of it, whatever it is.”

 

Face looked no more convinced. “If it’s so secret and special, then why aren’t there more guards? We haven’t seen a soul since we landed – you’d think the place would be crawling with fire power.”

 

A simple shrug met his words. “And don’t you think that would look suspicious? The Iranians are claiming this is nothing more than a hyrdo-electric plant. Brand new and sparkling maybe, but just a harmless power and irrigation project.”

 

Face let out a long sigh and rubbed his brow. “I just don’t know, boss,” he admitted, “it all feels wrong to me...”

 

Hannibal watched him for a minute then leaned in to press a kiss to his forehead. “It’ll be fine, kid,” he promised. “A milk run. Tonight we set the charges, blow this sucker sky high and we’ll be back in our cosy shack in Amara eating fish and chips and drinking Earl Grey before you know it.”    

 

The start of a smile finally cracked Face’s expression at Hannibal’s poor excuse for an English accent before he picked up his binoculars once more and Hannibal started to climb back down the tree. “Keep your eyes open, LT and I’ll send Murdock along to relieve you in an hour. It would be good to get some rest before we move out.”

 

“Yeah, sure...” Face’s eyes were back on the dam and his tone more resigned than encouraged but Hannibal knew him well enough to realise he’d done all he could to help for now. Face would have to get over this in his own time, and it wouldn’t be easy, Hannibal knew that and understood that. But what had happened in Iran before had been one thing, this was something very different indeed and what the kid was dreading just wouldn’t happen - it wouldn’t. 

 

Hannibal was going to make sure of that.

 

The night was colder than before, and Face was glad he’d left all of his clothes and boots on before he’d wrapped his bedroll around his long frame and settled back for an attempt at rest. It didn’t come, however, and his eyes remained glued on the small patch of starlight shining through the branches of the trees above as he heard Hannibal rousing Murdock as BA came back from his watch. “Okay, boys,” he whispered and slowly Face sat up.

 

It took mere minutes to pack up and stow everything they didn’t need to take with them. Face was no happier with the way things were proceeding, but he’d resigned himself to it all anyway and just hoped that Hannibal was right and they would be heading back to base in a couple of hours. They checked through the plan, Hannibal making sure they each knew their roles and then they cross referenced timings and finally, they were ready.

 

“You sure all you want me and BA to do is hang around?” Murdock asked, the gleam in his eyes making it blatantly clear that he’d rather be going into the dam with Hannibal and Face.

 

“You’re our backup,” Face answered at once. “If it all hits the fan, you’re the only hope we have.”

 

For a second there was only silence, Hannibal’s eyes narrowing at the emotions he could read into Face’s words.

 

“You expecting that?” BA, as usual, was straight to the point.

 

“No,” this time it was Hannibal who answered before Face had the chance. “But every plan needs a backup, Corporal. Now,” his eyes fell on Face’s set expression. “Are we ready for this?” A whoop, a smartly delivered, ‘Yes sir’ and a terse nod were his answers so he instantly rose to his feet and headed out of the camp.

 

_________________

 

Javad Gul paced nervously across the top of the dam, keeping to the shadows and making sure his night vision goggles were trained carefully on the surrounding terrain. He knew he would feel a whole lot better about this night if he knew exactly what was going on. The orders he’d received were sketchy though, specific only in his role for the night, not the reasons why. He knew the dam was going to be attacked at some point on this night, his orders were to let it happen, let the whole thing collapse in deathly surge of water, then capture the perpetrators and hand them over to the secret service – alive.   

 

It seemed crazy, this project had cost billions of rial, produced electricity and irrigation for the entire local community, employed hundreds of workers, had cost the lives of forty of the five thousand men who’d laboured for ten years to create it – where on earth was the sense in destroying it? Add to that the devastation that would be caused by the wall of water released when the dam broke up – thousands of people would lose their lives.

 

Javad had dared voice those concerns to his superior officer. Captain Mokri had smiled a thin lipped smile and told him not to worry; his job was to do as he was told and not to think too much. The people downstream had all been moved weeks ago to better land, everything would be fine, he just needed to do as he was ordered, otherwise it would be bad for his family. That threat was always there, always. Javad had a brother who was hoping to follow him into the Guard, he had a sister who needed a husband and another sister who had been born wrong and would always need looking after. Their mother was dead, their father old and infirm, how could he ever do anything that would impact on the rest of his family?

 

He shook his head and continued his silent patrol along the top of the dam.

 

x-x

 

“Happy now?” Hannibal quipped, “That enough security for you?”

 

They were hidden in the scrub at the side of the dam, watching carefully through the NV goggles at the patrols passing forwards and backwards along the top of the dam. Face was still frowning though and Hannibal was starting to worry that all this negativity would affect his performance; it wasn’t like Face at all, usually Hannibal had to reel him in, peg him back a little before he went in like a whirling dervish. He shook his head, “I dunno boss, it just stinks, that’s all.”

 

Hannibal didn’t answer, there really was nothing more he could say to try and soothe the kid’s fears, the only thing they could do was get in there and _do it._ “You ready?” he asked instead and breathed an inward sigh of relief as he saw Face draw himself up.

 

“Absolutely.”

 

“Let’s do it then.”

 

They had to time their approach to synch perfectly with the patrols which seemed to be run by Swiss engineering. They’d spotted a gap when there was no one at their end of the dam, a window of only three and half minutes, but enough for them to get up onto the top and then slide over the edge and onto the narrow ledge that ran the entire length of the concrete structure. They started setting the charges straight away, working with silent, practised precision in the darkness, lying still as the guards passed by above them and then on the move again, ghosts in the blackness.

 

There were fifteen charges in all. Spread out along the entire length of the dam and it took them the best part of an hour to set them all. Radio silence was essential as they were working so close to the guard’s patrol route, but Hannibal could almost feel BA and Murdock watching them from their vantage point at the side of the lake and it was good, having that back up there, just in case.

 

Finally they were done. All that they needed to do now was withdraw back to the first charge, put in the code and they would have twenty minutes to get clear before the dam was blown. Hannibal signalled to Face and they started moving back, reaching the part, dead centre, where there was an outcropping which took them away from the patrolling soldiers and here Face reached out, snagging Hannibal’s arm and drawing him as far from the body of the dam as he could.

 

“What?” Hannibal hissed, glancing anxiously at the sky away to the east.

 

“I still don’t like this,” Face’s voice was so low that Hannibal could hardly make it out, hoped, for Face’s sake, that it wouldn’t carry through the comm link.

 

“I think I get that, Lieutenant,” he whispered back.

 

But Face, it seemed, was not going to be easy to dissuade. “Can’t we have a look around? Inside the dam? It still doesn’t seem big enough to house anything much in there, not once you’ve got all the hydro-electric equipment.”

 

Hannibal rubbed his brow. “Kid, we don’t have the time.”

 

“It would take ten minutes, that’s all.”

 

“We’re risking blowing the whole mission.”

 

“We’re risking slaughtering thousands of civilians,” Face shot back. “You know how many settlements are down-stream of here?”

 

“We have our orders, those decisions are not ours to make!”

 

“Huh!” Face scoffed loudly, “And that’s what you’ve always taught me isn’t it boss? I need to follow my orders from above perfectly and to the letter? No room for manoeuvrability? No room for individualism? Yeah, right…”

 

Hannibal sighed and rubbed his hands over his grease-painted face, “You need to give me a little more to go on, kid…”

 

“Okay,” Face leaned in even closer to him. “There’s the size of this thing for starters, it’s not big enough, it’s _just_ not big enough, boss, I’m telling you. And then there’s the security, nothing, nada, zilch, not a jot until you get here, the place we’re supposed to be, where we’re supposed to be setting the charges. That strike you as odd?”

 

Said like that, maybe it did, but then again, they had no idea how much security was down below.

 

“So why don’t we check it out?” Face hissed when that was pointed out to him. “That’s what I’m saying here!”

 

Hannibal mulled it over. They had a little time. A little. And Face had proved, over and over, that he had a good nose for sniffing out when something was off. His instincts had saved them both already, more than once, just as Hannibal's had in turn. Maybe it was a mistake to ignore them any longer. He sighed. “Okay. But we stick together, a quick in and out and no solo acts, okay?” The debacle with Tuco was still only too fresh in Hannibal's mind.    

 

“As if…” Face remarked dryly and they rose from their silent crouches.

 

x-x

 

Deep inside the dam, in the CCTV suite, Captain Mokri stood with one of his Lieutenants watching a single screen intently. “What are they doing?” he whispered in Persian as two dark figures crouched next to one of the security doors. “Why aren’t they setting the charges?”

 

“Everyone is primed to evacuate,” Lieutenant Arbab confirmed, “And don’t worry, that’s a security coded door, they won’t get through it.”

 

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than the door popped open and the two figures silently slid inside, drawing an annoyed sigh from Mokri’s lips. “Really? _What_ are they doing?”

 

The two men watched in silence as the dark shadows crept stealthily down the corridor. “They’re heading for the muster point,” Arbab whispered, his voice low in concern and Mokri leaned further over the console, his face drawn in worry.

 

“We need a change of plan then,” he decided; after all, he knew exactly how much trouble he would be in if this event didn’t go off as required. Reaching onto his desk, he picked up his radio and barked off a series of instructions before replacing it on the desk and switching to another camera view so that he could keep pace with the two Americans.

 

“Do you really think that’s wise, sir?” Arbab offered cautiously, and Mokri just shook his head.

 

“What options do we have, here?”

 

x-x

 

The first doors they came to along the corridor were non-descript, wooden and plain and looking for all the world like they led into a conference room, and they might, for all they knew. A few quick hand signals later and they were ready, Face listening intently at the door for a moment, before he silently opened it, just enough for Hannibal to slip inside. Face was right behind him, NV goggles on, firearms ready to go and then the whole world seemed to light up in an agonising magnesium flare.

 

They never even had the chance to open fire. Before his eyes seemed to set on fire, Face had had a glimpse of what they’d stumbled into, armed troops, _lots_ of armed troops, just standing there in the darkness, almost as if they were waiting for them. Face had gone for his weapon, but his finger had barely moved towards the trigger when he was attacked from behind, the sides, many hands, many fists, driving him down, forcing his weapon down and he couldn’t shoot lest he blast his own feet off.  

 

He lost his footing, was shoved, face first, into the tiled floor, and bit his tongue to keep the shouts of pain inside as his kit was ripped off him, boots and fists rained down upon him and he had just enough time to think how strange it was that they hadn’t just been shot the second they walked in the room, when there was a blow to the side of his head and everything went black.

 

x-x

 

He had no idea how long he was out for, but came to chained to a chair, his head hanging painfully over his chest, the room full of heated Persian arguments. He stayed still and quiet, trying to work out any words from the constant stream of unfamiliar sounds; it was a long time since he’d heard any spoken Persian and it was at a time he would really rather forget. An unwelcome surge of panic tried to rear up inside him and he fought it back, as Hannibal had said, this was a different time and place and circumstance. It had been Face’s insistence to go off plan that had got them into this mess, what he needed to do now was everything in his power to make sure he got them out again.

 

At that, a dreadful thought hit him, and his thoughts went to Hannibal and the silence he’d had from the most important man in his life. Cautiously, making sure he kept his head down, he cracked an eye open and tried to check his surroundings. It wasn’t easy, there was a pounding in his head from the kicking he’d taken, and his eyes were struggling to focus after the way he’d almost been blinded earlier on. He tried again, slowly, slowly letting more light creep into his aching vision until he could make out a very familiar boot chained to a metal chair leg next to him and the pressure in his chest loosened just a little.

 

“You awake?” the voice spoke in heavily accented English and a hand grabbed a fistful of hair, yanking his head back and forcing his eyes closed against the light that burned painfully above him. “He’s awake now Colonel, seems we can finally get started.”

 

_Colonel?_ That one single word sent cold fear shooting through Face’s veins. How did they know who they were? How did they know they were even US Army for God’s sake, never mind having Hannibal's exact rank? They’d gone in blank here, no tags, no uniforms, hell, even their weapons were non-standard and untraceable, they should have been protected. And _started_? Started on what? The fear coiled within him as he desperately tried to hold back the memories of that last, fateful mission in Iran. 

 

The silence from Hannibal was ominous though and Face flicked a look his way, eyes narrowing at both the blood smeared down his chin and the hard set to his eyes – nothing about this setup looked even remotely good. He didn’t speak though, just held onto Face’s eyes with his own even as a troop of black-clothed men approached his chair, their array of weapons and restraining devices a stark warning to their intentions.

 

Face fought hard, even before his first ankle was unfastened from the chair leg he was on the offensive, throwing a head butt forward into the face of the first man idiot enough to come close to him. It was never going to end well though, his absolute terror of what was about to come next lending him determination and masking his pain as he was beaten and manhandled into the centre of the room then hauled up to hang from a hook in the ceiling by his wrists. Then they all stepped back and he was left, swinging impotently, ignoring the throbbing in his head, his ribs, his wrists, his kidneys – all over really – as he glared icily around the room and took savage satisfaction at the injuries he’d manage to inflict in return as they’d chained him up. _Army Ranger, boys_ … his eyes burned into each and every one of them, _you better watch your step…_

 

“Well, that was… entertaining.” The owner of the voice sidled into Face’s vision and he swung his hostile stare his way, coldly eyeing up the heavily decorated uniform that announced that this prick was pretty high up in the Revolutionary Guard.

 

Bile shot viciously up Face’s throat but he ruthlessly swallowed it down and held the laconic stare being thrown his way. The last time he’d been chained to a ceiling in front of that uniform he’d almost died, the skin practically stripped right off his body, the terror as he’d bucked and screamed and pleaded for Hannibal to save him almost palpable even now, all these years on. But he’d been nothing more than a kid then; a teenager who’d blagged his way into the army and discovered he’d actually bitten off more than he could chew. Those days were long gone, Face was a man and a man who could handle anything that any of these idiots wanted to throw his way; Hannibal's wretched expression as he held Face’s eyes was not encouraging though.

 

“Looks like your Lieutenant has a lot of spirit in him,” a theatrical sigh accompanied those words and Face drew his eyes from Hannibal to glare silently at the uniform. “Which makes me worry that this may take a long time – suppose we’d better get started.” He turned to the back of the room, “Arbab, we’re ready for you.”

 

Again that spike of anxiety, again the rush of bile and Face had to stop himself from whipping his head around to see what was headed his way. Deep in his memory, he could still see those damn birch rods they’d used to flay him with but this time Arbab was approaching with a shiny wheeled trolley loaded with equipment and somehow he knew that this was not going to be a whole lot better.

 

“You’re contravening the Geneva Convention,” Hannibal spoke for the first time, his voice low and steady but Face could hear the anxiety running through it – and it didn’t make him feel any better.

 

Not surprisingly, the guy in the uniform just laughed. “And you have any right at all to be in my country, Colonel? No – I thought not.” They stared coldly at each other. “You’re the one who can stop this, all you need to do is tell us the codes for those explosives and we wouldn’t have to contravene any treaties on the _inhumane_ treatment of prisoners, now would we?”

 

Face was confused at this, he’d assumed that the coming ‘inhumane treatment’ would be designed to make Hannibal agree to reading out some fabricated ‘confession’ on international television, or maybe just for fun after they’d almost blown their shiny new dam out of the water – but this… The only reason that the AGIR would need those codes would be to blow the damn things themselves which just didn’t make sense.

 

“I’ve already told you, you don’t need them,” Hannibal's voice was a rough growl. “You want to destroy this thing? Do it yourself, you’ll still have us to pin the blame on regardless of whose explosives you use.”

 

And that confirmed it all, Face’s initial suspicions, the lack of any muscle until they’d arrived here – this was not a heavy water plant and the team had dropped right into the middle of something altogether bigger and nastier. And just to make matters worse, it looked like they’d also been expected.

 

“We would, yes,” Face was itching to punch this guy in the mouth. “But where would the fun in that be? When you confess to what you’ve done, we’d really like you to _mean_ it.”

 

Fuck.

 

-x-

 

Hannibal just stared at that, his mouth suddenly parched as the depth of trouble they were in slowly opened up in front of him like a rotting flower. They’d been set up, that was for certain, drawn here like patsies to take the blame for wiping out maybe thousands of people in an act of international terrorism. For what aim? An excuse for retaliation? The blackening of the US’s integrity? Politician manoeuvring? Government blackmail? Who knew for sure. The only thing that was clear was that they would have done it as well, blown the dam, murdered the people still living below it all and walked straight into the trap set for their capture if it hadn’t been for Face and his sixth sense screaming at him that something was wrong.

 

As it was they were only half in the shit, they still had one toe holding the door open – all they had to do was keep their silence on the issue of the codes and wait for their chance to escape. From his careful digging, Hannibal doubted that the Iranians actually had the means to blow the dam without them, they needed to go together otherwise the structure would hold firm and so couldn’t be triggered singly. It also appeared that they didn’t have the hardware on site that would allow them to place their own charges – although that could no doubt be rectified in a matter of hours… 

 

“You know this is a lost cause,” Hannibal glanced back to the gloating AGIR general and was horrified to see that Face had been stripped to the waist whilst Hannibal had been musing. “I will enjoy the coming hours. You? Your man here?” he shrugged, “Not so much.”

 

And then the full horror of what was about to happen landed in Hannibal’s gut like a blow from a lead pipe. Everything Face had been terrified of, everything that Hannibal had promised him was impossible – here they were again and here it was again and, just like before, it was Hannibal who stood in between Face and all that suffering. Jesus… he was a stupid and proud man, far too full of his own infallibility to ever consider that maybe the kid had been right and now? Fuck… he couldn’t let him pay in blood again, he just couldn’t.

 

“Don’t.”

 

Face’s voice was cold, quiet, but still resounded in the silence of the room and Hannibal's eyes flashed upwards, finding that intense blue gaze zeroed straight in on him, bristling with anger and determination, but none of the fear that Hannibal knew would be swirling around inside him. He shook his head, “Kid… I…” How could he do it? How could he sit there and watch Face being hurt? _Again?_

 

“Don’t you dare,” for just a second Face’s eyes jumped to Arbab as he stepped away from his shining trolley but they were instantly back on Hannibal. “You are a fucking _soldier_. So am I. You think I can’t handle this?”

 

The general’s laughter removed Hannibal's need to reply. “Typical American bluster! Let’s see shall we Colonel? Let’s see just how long your man here can _handle_ it before he breaks, how long he can last before the crying and the begging starts.”      

 

Face flushed at that and Hannibal could have killed the bastard for his inadvertent choice of words alone; it might have been years since Face almost died at the hands of his Iranian tormentors, but the fact that he’d broken, that he _had_ cried and begged still haunted the kid through his nights and his days. Hannibal was only too aware how he too had pleaded with them to stop, had offered to give up everything he held dear just to save his boy. Would he do that again? Would he let hundreds of innocents drown in their homes for Face? Would he be able to live with himself afterwards if he did? Would _Face_?

 

There were plenty of answers out there for him on this – but none of them he liked.

 

“Where shall we start then?” Hannibal’s eyes flicked up to the General’s face as he eyed the array of instruments set out under a cloth on the shining trolley. “Something gentle to start the session softly? A big bang to get us going?” the smile on his face was sickening, as was the love that he clearly had for each and every implement of pain he picked up and examined; Hannibal felt that this session was going to be as much about his sadism as it was persuading Hannibal and Face to offer up the codes.

 

“This.”

 

It was a knife he held up, long and thin, it’s slightly serrated blade catching the lights of the room and flashing light across his leering face and Hannibal swallowed hard, his eyes darting across to Face, guilt and terror gnawing uncomfortably at his bones.

 

Face’s expression was unreadable, his eyes hard as flint as he watched Arbab and the General croon over the instrument of his torture. A wave of grief and fury washed through Hannibal as he watched his brave and stoic boy prepare himself for what was coming his way; this wasn’t fair – none of it was fair, there was no way that he could do this.

 

“Stop.”

 

The knife was still nowhere near Face’s skin, all that wonderful golden flesh remained unmarked, untainted, but Hannibal could still envisage it as it was before, could smell all the blood, _see_ it all as it soaked the dirty floor. He could hear Face’s cries of pain, the way he begged Hannibal to help him to make it stop…

 

“Don’t touch him, I’ll tell you.”

 

It was hard to say which of the two Iranians looked the most surprised by Hannibal's instant acquiescence but neither of them got the chance to say anything as Face was there first.

 

“What the _fucking hell_ , boss?” he was furious, his eyes boring into Hannibal, an anger in there that Hannibal had rarely seen. “Are you insane? What the fuck do you think you’re _doing_?”

 

Hannibal could only shake his head, “Kid… I can’t…”

 

“You can’t? _You_ can’t?” the bitter laughter sounded alien coming from Face’s lips. “This is not your decision to make, Colonel. Get a fucking backbone – you’re a disgrace to the army you serve! What about all those _people_?”

 

“Gag him,” Hannibal had visibly startled at those words and the general had seen the danger, had already had enough as he realised that Face’s pep talk was not what he wanted Hannibal to hear. Arbab started Face’s way with a handful of cloth but Face was not done, his words spilling out in a desperate tumble as his silence loomed closer.

 

“Don’t you _dare_. You hear me? Don’t you _fucking dare_!” Hannibal just stared at him. “You cave on this and I swear to you, it’s done, all of this… it’s done. I’ll never forgive-” Then Arbab was there with his gag and Face switched the direction of his venom, spitting and swearing and fighting so much until a gun butt in his groin and a guard’s hand in his hair finally made him comply enough to be silenced.

 

The words, however, had already done their job; a slap to Hannibal's pride and his heart all in one go. What was he to do now? How had difficult circumstances instantly become impossible? Could he sit here and watch the love of his life _tortured_ when he had the simple means to halt it all? But then how could he act in a way that was so opposed to Face’s wishes? How could he risk damaging what they had together? But then, what use was their relationship if Face was killed or maimed or emotionally damaged by what was about to happen? And only an idiot would think that either of them were ever going to be allowed to walk out of this room alive… But then again, as Face had said… all those people…

 

“Cut him already, Captain, I’m bored with this!”

 

The general looked more than bored however, he looked incensed at the wait he was being forced to endure but then Face himself seemed less than ready for them to start just yet. Arbab advanced, the long thin knife raised dramatically in the air in front of him and like a cobra, Face struck. In a single moment, the muscles in his arms and abdomen clenched and his legs rose, one boot lashing out at the knife and sending it spinning away, the other stamping down hard on the solar plexus of the advancing Captain, catapulting him backwards into the wall.

 

The general roared his displeasure once more, crossing the room to kick at his hapless aide as Face went back to hanging by his wrists, his chest heaving in stress and exertion, his eyes narrowed in a cold and calculating focus as he breathed heavily around the gag.

 

Frantically, Arbab scrambled to his feet, a hand trying to deflect the kicks that were still being sent his way even as he scrabbled around on the floor for the knife, brandishing it in a way that briefly gave Hannibal hope that he might decide to use it on his own superior. That never happened though, the general raised his yelling up another notch and Arbab cringed back on himself, even as the guard from the door hurriedly crossed to Face’s side.

 

Face had been watching carefully though and was ready for this latest attack, swinging a single leg out sideways to kick the unsuspecting youth in the jaw the second he was in range. The general exploded again. Yelling at both of his men and the guard instantly tried once more, crawling back to his feet, one hand gingerly testing out his jaw as he approached Face from behind.

 

Yet again this was unsuccessful, Face took his weight up on his wrists once more and lifted his knees, exploding backwards with both feet and catching the guard mid-thigh this time, sending him reeling into a table, a muffled cry from his lips incensing the general even more.

 

“Enough!” he roared as both of his men cautiously eyed Face up. Hannibal looked around in fear as he heard the familiar sound of weapon being drawn but it wasn’t Face who had it pointed his way. The barrel was cold as it rested against the side of his own head, but not as cold as the eyes that Face turned their way. “Enough.” The general wasn’t happy, his plans were unravelling around him and there was no way he was going to stand for that. “You want to play this game?” his eyes shone malevolently as he stared at Face across the room. “You want to watch me shoot him instead?” the gun moved to point at a kneecap instead. “It’s your choice soldier. You either do this right or you listen to him scream first. Either way you still end up in your own pain. What’s it to be?”

 

The room slid into silence, the tension ratcheting up as everyone watched Face, waited to see what he'd do. The moment drew on, the General smiling as he stared into Face's blank expression.. Of course Hannibal knew what Face would do – and what could he even say about that? At least then maybe the kid would then understand why Hannibal would have to cave in - as they both knew he eventually would.

 

Abruptly, the tension seemed to leave Face’s body but the coldness in his eyes remained, locking in on the General as the guard approached once more, cautiously wrapping himself around Face’s lower legs as he sank to the floor and held on tight. Arbab was back then as well, blood seeping from a cut under his hair line and Hannibal wondered idly if it were Face or the general who had done that. The Captain’s hands were shaking though, and there was anger enough in his eyes for Hannibal to fear how he was going to try and redress the balance.

 

He didn’t have to wait long, Face himself was still tensing, was still preparing himself for what was coming his way when the blade met his skin. That first grunt of pain couldn’t quite be silenced quickly enough and burnt Hannibal as he heard it but following that one slip, Face was silent, his eyes locked on the general still as the knife trailed a slow and deliberate pattern across his taut abdomen.

 

“How beautiful,” the general offered as Arbab stepped back. “You haven’t lost your touch. See how his chest is heaving? He’s trying to be brave, but we all know how he wants to scream and cry, how much it hurts…”

There was a long, gently undulating line cut across Face’s torso, right above the top of his low slung cargos. The cut wasn’t deep, but beads of blood were blooming along its length, welling and dripping in slow trails to soak into the black material of his waistband. Arbab approached again, this time with what looked like a bottle of cleaning fluid in his hand. “Bleach,” the general informed Face in a voice dripping with glee. “Best to keep wounds clean now isn’t it?”

 

There was no grunt of pain this time as Arbab carefully sprayed a fine mist of the fluid across Face’s belly, but Hannibal watched his eyes slide shut, watched them screw together in pain before they were open once more, cold and blank and boring into Arbab this time as he readied the knife once more.

 

So the pattern continued, a slow and deliberate cut, curling and twisting across Face’s skin in ever more elaborate swirling patterns. Face was back to suffering in silence, his eyes closing from time to time when it became too much, his body twitching in helpless reaction when the burning bleach found his skin.

 

Hannibal bore it all in agonised silence. He would do this for as long as Face could keep a handle on it, long enough to hopefully give Murdock and BA time to come to their rescue. And after that? Well, he wasn’t exactly sure what would come after that. Face was right, he couldn’t kill all those other people, not even to save Face from agony – so where did that leave him? The answer to that wasn’t quite clear yet but this would stop, it had to. Didn’t it? 

 

Arbab had stepped back and was admiring his work yet again as Face’s chest heaved in pain and blood and sweat ran down his sides.

 

“Wonderful job,” there was a thickness to the general’s voice that Hannibal didn’t like and made the hairs at the back of his neck stand up. “Maybe you could cut me a souvenir of the day? Something I could keep with me once these two are long dead?”

 

Hannibal swung his head around even as Arbab stood considering in silence and there was the general leaning against the wall at the back of the room, one hand slowly stroking the erect penis that jutted eagerly from his open fly and Hannibal's heart clenched in a new horror, the man’s eventual plans for the session now clearly set out. Looking back at Face, he wasn’t sure if the kid had noticed or not yet. He was watching Arbab carefully, eyes tracking the bloody knife as it edged closer to him once more.

 

“A nipple, sir?” he offered in a thick accent. “Or both of them?”

 

“Both,” now he was aware of it, Hannibal could hear the bastard jerking off behind him and knew that they were talking in English just to toy with them as well.

 

Face, it seemed, was starting to struggle. The guard on the floor at his feet was hanging on grimly as a grinning Arbab advanced and Face’s body writhed with the automatic urge to flee. He was trapped though, held immobile, his chest exposed and unprotected and Hannibal too began to squirm, began to tug at his bindings anew – how could he sit here and watch his boy go through _this_?

 

The knife was lifted, turned on its side, Arbab reached out and pinched Face’s left nipple in his fingers, pulling it taut, frowning as he considered where the first cut should be and then the entire room shook with the force of an explosion sounding somewhere high above them.

 

For a moment, everybody froze. Hannibal looked to the door expecting at any moment BA and Murdock to come barrelling in to save the day. Arbab still had hold of Face’s nipple though, was still poised to cut and the general still held his dick in his hand, his head cocked as he listened.

 

No more explosions sounded, the door stayed shut, the structure of the dam held firm and the general starting stroking himself again, appearing to have decided they would carry on as planned when a siren started wailing up and down the corridors and panicked shouts filled the air. That got everyone moving. The guard was on his feet in a second, gun drawn, eyes panicked, Arbab had his knife up still but this time it was pointed at the door, his back to Face, poised in waiting for an order from the general who was muttering ferociously as he stuffed his cock back into his trousers.

 

Finally he moved for the door with both the Captain and the guard going to follow him through. He barked something in Persian, though, and the guard stopped in his tracks; within in moment, both he and Arbab were gone, the door slamming shut behind them once more.

 

Hannibal felt the relief flow through him like a soothing balm, it may have only been a temporary reprieve, but it was still a reprieve and Hannibal would take that any day.

 

Face it seemed, had other ideas. The door had barely clicked into its frame before he was arching upwards once more, wrists tearing, arms straining, blood-streaked torso trembling with exertion as he heaved upwards, catapulting his legs outwards and catching the unsuspecting guard around the neck.

 

The man was doomed from that very first contact. He dropped his gun in shock which lost him any advantage he might have had and his arms were never going to be strong enough to break the iron-clad grip of Face’s calves around his neck. Slowly, slowly, Face drew him backwards, tightening his hold with every passing second. Increasingly, the struggles became more and more desperate and the gasping breaths more and more intermittent until, finally, the young guard lost his fight as his entire frame collapsed in on itself, sending him crumpling to the ground like a broken doll. Face lost his grip, but it was past mattering anyway and he hung limply, catching his own breath as he started down at the unconscious guard.

 

“Good move, kid.” Hannibal might have been surprised by the initial move, but he was certainly quick enough to follow up on their sudden advantage. With three quick jumps, he’d turned the chair he was chained to until he was next to the hapless soldier and then he tipped it over, crashing onto his side at the man’s hip. There was a few anxious moments before he was able to snag a key with his reaching finger and more than a few choice words when he realised that it wasn’t the key for his shackles. Not to be deterred he edged forward slightly, eye on the door, ear on the panic outside and finally his desperate fingers reached the fallen gun.

 

There was only one thing he could do with it, one way to help them and a way that could so easily backfire as well. He twisted onto his back, weapon held precariously in a finger-tip grip and cautiously pointed it Face’s way. “You ready?” Face nodded, Hannibal aimed and the quiet of their little room was shattered by a single gun-shot.

 

It was obvious that Face had been bracing himself for the impact and the landing but both came as a shock to his battered body as the chain was blasted from the ceiling. He fell heavily to the ground, smearing blood all over the floor as he writhed in pain, the gag soaking up the cries of agony threatening to burst out of him. Hannibal had the gun up and at the door but the alarms were still ringing and another explosion sounded far above them and no one seemed to be paying them much attention at all.

 

Gingerly, Face rolled onto his knees, hissing as he cautiously brought his arms down and fumbled the chains from around his wrists. Hannibal could see him shaking in pain and exertion, noted the beads of blood as they welled and dripped with increased vigour but just willed him on, needing him to free them both.

 

“Come on, kid, you can do this.”

 

Face shot him a look, dark and unreadable, but swollen and unresponsive fingers carefully reached up and took hold of the gag, tugging it out of his mouth to hang around his neck. “I’m fucking coming.” His voice was quiet, hoarse and strained and just made Hannibal’s heart beat all the quicker. They slid back into silence as Face slowly made his way to Hannibal's side, poking at the shackles on his wrists and ankles before reaching into a pocket low down on his combats and pulling out a lock-pick, “Keep still.”

 

Hannibal obliged, he still had the handgun pointed at the door and he willed himself to be calm, prayed for a little time as Face desperately worked on his restraints.

 

It seemed they were due a little luck as the door stayed firmly closed as Face worked, but, as seemed the way with this mission, the luck fizzled out just a little sooner than he would have liked. Hannibal was still laid on his side, still sitting on the over-turned chair. Both hands were free as was one ankle as Face frantically fumbled the lock pick in the tumblers of the final lock and the door burst open. Hannibal didn’t think, there wasn’t time and far too much was at stake. With one big hand he pushed Face down, doing his best to ignore the grunt of pain, and with the other he drew the gun up, firing four shots in quick succession then staring in bleak satisfaction at the body of Captain Arbab as it slid down the wall in front of him.

 

Silence filled the little room. Under his hand, Face stirred and with a ‘click’ the final lock sprang open. Face moved first, struggling painfully to his feet and snatching his discarded t-shirt from the floor, eyes resting dispassionately on Arbab as his uniform turned scarlet with blood. He turned away again and stooped to pick up the rest of his kit, stepping to one side as Hannibal rose next to him.

 

“Here,” Hannibal had to look, needed to touch, “Let me see.” 

 

Face however, was having none of it. In a second he had spun away, a look of something Hannibal didn’t like being thrown his way before it was gone, hidden in a mask of cold indifference. “It’s nothing. Come on, we have to go.”

 

It wasn’t nothing, it would never be nothing, but Face was already pulling his t-shirt on over his tortured flesh and he was right – they did have to go, time was against them and whatever Murdock and BA had pulled to get them this far, it wouldn’t be enough to get them home, not unless they helped themselves. Hannibal allowed Face to lead, pulled his own professional mantle back into place and in seconds they were back in their kit, Face, looking pale and drawn at one side of the doorway, Hannibal the other. “Go,” and then they were through.

 

The next twenty minutes were a whirlwind of blackness and fire, shots in the dark and frantic dashes for cover. Hannibal didn’t speak and for that matter, neither did Face. Not that that was an issue, they both knew what they needed to do and worked as the seamless team they were until they found themselves at the first of the charges they had planted themselves in what now felt like a different lifetime.

 

“I’ll start at the far end,” Face’s voice was still quiet but Hannibal could hear it plainly even above the sound of the panic and fires that Murdock and BA had started and he didn’t like the flat tone.

 

“No,” his hand had shot out and grabbed at a sleeve without thought. “We stick together.”

 

Something washed through Face’s eyes, anger, irritation, fear, Hannibal found it hard to place but certainly didn’t like it. It was gone in an instant though, a heavy scowl settling in its place. “Why?”

 

Hannibal had to supress the shudder that threatened him at Face’s bleak tone even though he himself was already struggling with the guilt that was already ripping at his heart. “Because it’s an order,” it was sharper than he intended  - far sharper than Face deserved but the thought of anything else happening to the kid before they got the hell away was just about more than Hannibal could stand.

 

There was an awful moment of tension as Hannibal could see Face debating his options, deciding whether to fight this, and then it passed and he capitulated, but it was with nothing even resembling good grace.

 

They worked together in silence, Hannibal knew that Face was hurting, wanted nothing more than to get him away and to some medical care and safety but first and foremost they had a job to do and – as they both knew only too well – the job _always_ came first.

 

It was fiddly, one wrong move and they’d both be blown to hell along with anyone else unlucky enough to be either on the dam or in the path of the water below them, but it wasn’t impossible and so, within twenty minutes they were packing away the final charge and looking to make their retreat. Hannibal still had his comms link, but Face’s had been nowhere to be found when he’d hurriedly pulled his kit back on over his mutilated skin. He switched it back on now, praying it was going to work. “Captain? Report?”

 

An enthusiastic whoop of joy was his initial answer, loud enough in his ear to make him wince. “Welcome back, sir! I knew you’d make it out!” a slight pause, “You got the Faceman there with you?”

 

Hannibal glanced to his side where Face was crouched, his skin pale, his expression drawn as he kept watch around them both. “He’s here.”

 

“Thank the Lordy!”

 

“We need out.”

 

“Of course you do,” in an instant, Murdock’s demeanour changed; all hyper-excitement vanishing to be replaced with solid, steady professionalism. “Me and the big guy have a corridor all ready for you. Head along the edge of the dam, east to west, and we’ll cover your tracks. When you get the side of the ravine we’ve planted a charge that’ll make sure you’re not followed.”

 

Hannibal was already on the move, gesturing Face to follow him. “We can’t blow that dam, Captain. You hear me? Mission objective has changed.”

 

“Absolutely, sir. We been watching you. We got that. You on your way?”

 

“Coming now,” gunfire exploded all around them and Hannibal had to raise his voice as Face started answering back. “And we’re coming in hot!”

 

“Roger that, Colonel,” that was BA. “We got you covered.”

 

It was a frantic scramble for freedom that Hannibal began to doubt they’d win. Face ran out of ammo before they’d even reached the middle of the dam, managing to snag another weapon laid next to an injured guard just when it was most needed. Hannibal’s ammo ran dry soon after and he had to resort to using his knife to carve a path for them at the very last moment, despite the covering fire coming from the far end of the dam. They scrambled up the side of the gulley, slipping and sliding through the mud and Hannibal reached back, his fingers fastening around Face’s pack when he felt the kid slipping away from him and the very next moment they were propelled forward through the bushes when the entire world behind them seemed to explode. They tumbled onwards, crashing to a sudden halt in the undergrowth, Hannibal managing to land on top of Face, Face’s hastily smothered yelp of pain like a barb through Hannibal’s heart.

 

“You okay? Kid? You okay?” Hannibal staggered to his feet, aware that he was probably causing a fresh wave of pain with every movement he made and before Face had chance to answer, the bushes ahead of them rustled and parted and Murdock burst through.

 

“Wow, bossman! Did-” he came to a sudden halt, his eyes wide as he found himself staring down the barrel of Face's side arm. “Hey, I come in peace, Faceguy.”

 

Lowering his weapon, Face rolled away to the side as Hannibal turned back to his Captain. “What the hell was that?”

 

“Did you use all that explosive, fool?”

 

BA was the last to enter the party and Murdock’s excitement died a little in the face of the distinct lack of enthusiasm from the rest of his team. “Yeah,” BA turned away and sighed and Murdock fixed his eyes on Hannibal. “You wanted it to look good, right? Always needs to look good, these bozos need to know who they’re dealing with here!”

 

“That dam needs to hold,” Hannibal countered, turning to look back the way they’d come even as he was aware of Face slowly getting to his feet a little behind them.

 

“It’ll hold,” it was almost possible to hear the pout in Murdock's voice. “I have blown things up before you know!”

 

“I don’t wanna know,” BA muttered. “You want to go back and check, Hannibal?”

 

“No,” this was Face rising to his feet like a phoenix from the ashes. “We need to get the fuck out of here, I’m on point,” and with that he was gone, almost sliding into the shadows, Murdock nipping at his heels.

 

“But it was good, though, Face, yeah? You saw the explosion didn’t you?”

 

“Fucking felt it.”

 

“And it was good? I swear, the man in the moon could have seen that!”

 

Wondering he’d ever get to the point when he could describe this inaugural mission as anything approaching a success, Hannibal shook his head and took off after his team.

 

______________

 

It was still dark by the time they reached the kayaks and Hannibal was pleased, at least, that that much luck had stuck with them. It didn’t last much longer though, as soon as they’d hit the water, the sky away to the east started to brighten considerably and the unmistakable thrum of hunting choppers could be heard. The team didn’t speak, they knew their task, they knew the dangers and they knew how to keep themselves safe, skirting through the reeds, the boats and themselves draped in foliage for camouflage.

 

“They’re searching the foothills, Hannibal, just like you said,” there was a note of awe in BA’s voice that Hannibal had spotted on more than one occasion since the formation of this team.

 

“Of course,” Hannibal pushed the rear of their kayak a little further from the bank. “That would have been the obvious place to flee, the best place to hide, which is why we’re here and not there. Right, boys?”

 

BA nodded and Murdock responded with a smart, “Right you are, Colonel,” but there was nothing from Face just silence from the front of his kayak as he steadfastly cut through the water.

 

Hannibal watched him a few moments longer then couldn’t hold his concern in any longer. “You okay up there, Face?”

 

 

“Sure.”

 

A frown creased Hannibal’s forehead and BA flicked him a quick look but it was Murdock that spoke up. “Shit, Face… that _blood_ on you?”

 

The morning light was creeping onwards, and despite Face’s black gear, the shine of wet blood was blatantly obvious. Face, however, didn’t miss a stroke. “It’s not mine.”

 

There was no answer to that, nothing more than Hannibal's frown deepening as they continued to glide upstream towards their RV point.

 

____________

 

“How far have we left to go?” Hannibal's question had been aimed at Murdock who had the map spread out on his knee, but it was Face who answered.

 

“Two clicks.”

 

“Maybe we should take a break then?”

 

The morning sun was now high in the sky and although the ‘copters were still in the air, they remained concerned with the distant line of mountains, keeping well away from the lowland and the lazy river. The temperature was rising steadily and, despite the sweat that soaked them all, it was clear to see that Face's t-shirt was still drenched in wet blood.

 

“No,” it was the most Face had spoken since leaving the dam. “We keep going.”

 

Hannibal wavered, he needed to see what the hell was going on under Face’s clothes, he needed to ask why the kid had lied to Murdock about all the blood but maybe Face was right – they needed to get away, maybe they should just put their backs into it and keep going? Neither Murdock nor BA offered an opinion on the matter so Hannibal just gritted his teeth and dug in, trying not to stare at the wet, red stain that was soaking Face’s back. 

 

Those last couple of K were the worst, the ‘copters were starting to swing their way, possibly working out that they’d been hoodwinked and Face was now bleeding so badly that the water in the bottom of their boat had a red tinge to it.

 

“Call us in, BA,” Hannibal ordered as soon as they’d swept the kayaks up onto a little pebbled beach and as the big man crouched in the reeds and requested an extraction, the rest of Hannibal's team seamlessly packed away their kit until, by the time the friendly bird swept in low from the south, they were ready to go and heading away without any of the other choppers even realising they were there.

 

Hannibal spent a few moments talking to the co-pilot, then radioed back to base, relying the change circumstances they’d been presented with to a suspiciously silent General Kilshaw, before finally flopping back in his seat for the ride home, glancing around his fledgling team to try and assess how they’d come out of their first live op together.

 

Murdock was easy, he was leaning out through the open door, wind in his face, grin splitting him in half, singing and talking animatedly to himself as they flashed low over the tree-tops. BA, less easy to gage as he was sitting pinned back in his chair, straps tight across his chest, eyes closed, lips pressed together in a thin line of discomfort. Hannibal frowned, wondered if this lingering hatred of flying was going to be a problem and let his eyes drift to Face. Face himself was sat as stiffly as BA, his eyes open and his brow creased in what Hannibal supposed was barely contained pain and his heart ached a little.

 

What had he done? What had his actions, rash and egotistical, caused for the man he loved? A man who felt his own failings so deeply, who needed little prompting to think the worst of himself, to believe that he deserved each and every bad thing that came his way? After Hannibal had promised him as well, _sworn_ to him that there would be no more of this pain for him.

 

The desire to take him in his arms, peel away that blood soaked t-shirt and cover him in gentle kisses, soothe away all that pain, was almost over-powering but it was no good; Face wouldn’t want that at all, never in a million years would he want to show weakness like that in front of his new team mates. After all, why else would he have lied to Murdock about the blood? And, of course, it would get them both thrown out and what would Face do then? How would he cope without that structure and organisation behind him?

 

Hannibal had made a spectacular mess of this mission, largely because he’d refused to listen when Face told him something was adrift, when Face had questioned orders that Hannibal had just blindly followed. What was the point in teaching the boy so well, making him into a soldier who thought for himself, if Hannibal was never going to listen to the thoughts that surfaced?

 

He was a fool, nothing more than that. And it had been Face who’d paid for that foolishness; yet again a dusty, concrete floor in Iran was covered in the kid’s blood. Hannibal felt sick.

 

They were back sooner than he could have hoped, the familiar outline of Amara rising from the sands like a cobra. Hannibal's eyes narrowed as he saw Kilshaw and what was undoubtedly the same spook who had fed them such appalling intel, but then he made out Morrison’s figure striding through the dust to stand with them and a thin smile broke over his face; it would be good to have the back up when Hannibal told them what he thought of their mission… he doubted very much whether Russ would be up for loaning any of his Rangers out to Kilshaw again, not after this fiasco.

 

It wasn’t the end to this mission he wanted, but it was what it was and he knew there was no way around any of it.

 

“Face,” he had to shout over the engines as Face wasn’t wearing cans, and two tired but expressionless blue eyes flicked his way. Hannibal gestured down to the landing area and the posse stood awaiting his arrival. “Gonna be busy.”

 

Following his finger, Face just nodded and made their ‘okay’ gesture before leaning back in his seat once more, eyes closed and Hannibal sighed. Yes, the kid would do everything that Hannibal needed from him once the wheels were back on the ground, but it wasn’t okay; it was about as far from okay as possible. He wondered if that would ever change…

 

_______________

 

The debrief was worse than he’d feared. Morrison was furious and yelled a lot which was in direct counterpoint to Hannibal’s cold rage. It was hard to concentrate on Kilshaw’s pathetic excuses and Agent Brown’s obvious lies when all he could see was that knife tracing a pattern over Face’s skin, the blood welling and dripping in its wake, Face’s breath hitching deep in his chest as he tried to get away from the fire.

 

“How long do you think Peck will be out?” It was the sudden silence in the room that jerked Hannibal back to the present more than anything else.

 

“Sorry?”

 

Morrison sighed and tried again. “Peck. How long will he be out of action?”   

 

The truth was Hannibal had no real idea. He’d not had a chance to have a good look at the extent of the injuries, wasn’t sure how much blood the kid had lost. There was always the possibility of infection, blood poisoning, wounds refusing to heal and then add to that the trauma of it all, the nightmares, the loss in confidence; this whole debacle could set the kid back years. “I’m not sure. We’ll have to see what the medics say about it.”

 

“Huh,” Brown scoffed from behind his Aviators as he looked at his notes. “From what you’ve said, Colonel, sounds like it was nothing more than a few scratches!”

 

Hannibal forced himself to sit in his place, to count to ten in his head lest he just tear the idiot to pieces right in front of everyone but fortunately, Morrison had his back. “You ever been tortured, Brown?”

 

The agent looked up, Hannibal could see his shock even with the mirrored glasses to hide behind. “No, but I don’t-”

 

“Then shut the fuck up. You dick-head.”

 

Kilshaw didn’t much like the sound of that and drew himself up as he tried to think of a suitably snappy come back but Hannibal had tired of the politics of it all and rose to his feet, his bulk intimidating enough to make Kilshaw think twice but Hannibal himself only had eyes for Morrison. “I am dismissed? I’ve got men to attend to.”

 

Morrison rose with him, nodding as he spoke. “Of course, of course, and I’ll be waiting for a report back on Face, you got that? ASAP.”  

 

Hannibal threw a quick salute his way, and without even bothering to glance at Kilshaw and Brown, turned and made his way from the tent.

 

Five hours they’d been back. Plenty of time for Face to have sorted out the post-mission essentials and to have taken himself to medical. Hannibal wondered absently if he were still there, if they wanted him keeping in for observation, but knowing Face and his distaste of spending time away from Hannibal, decided to head back to their temporary base instead.

 

The lights were on when he got there, shining brightly under the door and around the thin drapes but only from the side of the hut that BA and Murdock were occupying. Trying to steady the thumping of his heart, Hannibal let himself in and pushed open the door to the sleeping quarters. Murdock and BA looked up at him, Murdock offering a huge smile and clambering to his feet, tugging his lurid Hawaiian shirt back down to cover the waistband of his combats.

 

“Alright, bossman? They all happy? Not pissed we didn’t blow the dam up?”

 

That took Hannibal back a little, he’d genuinely never even considered whether Kilshaw and Brown would be pissed or not; quite honestly, he didn’t care. “It’s all fine,” his eyes flicked right around the little room, triple checking. “Where’s Face?”

 

This time Murdock and BA shared a quick, concerned glance before Murdock answered again. “Faceman? He aint here. We aint seen him since we got back. He sent us to get showered and everything, said he’d finish up what he was doing and meet us back here. Said we could go for a drink, that he’d get BA into the O Club.”

 

“I don’t want him getting me in anywhere,” BA muttered under his breath but Hannibal just rubbed at his forehead. Typical Face, no mention of medical, getting rid of the rest of the team as fast as he could just so they’d not spot he was injured.

 

“No sign of him since? No message?”

 

Murdock just shrugged, looking about as tragic as he could get. “No… Should we have stayed with him? Were we wrong to leave when he said?”

 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Hannibal let out a long sigh. “Right, okay, I’ll go look for him. Why don’t you two head out? We’ll catch up with you later.”

 

If anything, Murdock's expression fell even further. “You sure? You don’t want us to come and help?”

 

Hannibal couldn’t imagine anything Face would want less. “No. You go on, it’s not a problem.” With that he turned and walked back out again, trying to remember where the medical facility was and attempting to keep a lid on the mounting dread in his stomach.

 

In ten minutes he was there, tapping his fingers on the rough wooden bench until an orderly looked his way and smiled. “Good evening sir,” the English accent was a surprise, “Can I help you?”

 

“Yes,” Hannibal cleared his throat, “Lieutenant Peck, US Army, Rangers. I wondered if he was still here?”

 

“Lieutenant Peck, sir…” the orderly scanned through the clipboard in front of him. “No. Sorry. No one of that name here.”

 

Hannibal frowned. “So… what does that mean? He’s been and gone? Never been here? What?”

 

The orderly flushed under the sharp tone to Hannibal’s voice as he flicked backwards and forwards through his papers. “Erm… never been here, sir. No paperwork for him at all.”

 

“Never been here?” If Hannibal thought that finding Face had been detained for observation would have worried him, discovering he hadn’t been seen at all was somehow even worse. “What the hell does that mean?”

 

“Colonel Smith?” A voice from behind startled them both and the relief in the orderly’s eyes was clearly evident.  

 

“Yes?” Hannibal turned to size up the nurse who had called him as she stood awkwardly in the doorway, a packet of cigarettes in her hand.

 

Offering a thin smile, the nurse lifted the packet and gestured outside. “I’m going for a smoke break. You want to join me? I saw Face earlier on.”

 

Hannibal raised an eyebrow as the nurse ducked out; as far as he was aware, Face knew no one on this base, they’d certainly never been here before, so how come she’d seen him? Called him by his nickname? It wasn’t unusual for Face to sleep with women from time to time, it certainly helped dispel the rumours about him and Hannibal but still… that would be fast work, even for Face.

 

The frown deepening on his face Hannibal followed her out, tracking her down from the smell of the smoke and finding her a little way off, standing next to a darkened tent, cigarette in her fingers, arms tightly around herself as she fought against the chill of the desert night. “Sergeant Harris?” Hannibal had noted her stripes and name badge. “There’s something you want to tell me?”

 

She nodded and took another drag of her cigarette before answering, her posture undeniably stressed. “Face,” she shuffled her feet awkwardly. “He’s asleep in my bunk.”

 

Hannibal felt that as an actual, physical blow in his gut and he had to work hard not to snap out his reply. “Is he now?” he was surprised how measured his growl sounded. “Might have had the courtesy to tell me before he went out to get laid.”

 

Harris sighed and took another drag of her smoke. “He didn’t go there to _get laid_ , Colonel,” her own bite was pretty fierce. “Have you seen the state he’s in?”

 

Again, that blow in his gut and for a fraction of a second Hannibal was back in that room watching in grim fascination as Arbab carved patterns into Face’s once-perfect skin. “I have,” what the _fuck_ was Face playing at here? “Which is why I expected to find him in medical and not your bed.”

 

“He didn’t want to make it official,” another long draw in and exhale out again, wreathing them both in smoke. “So he came to me. Wanted me to patch him up but keep it off his record.”

 

A sliver of Hannibal's irritation vanished, replaced instead by concerned confusion. “Why?”

 

“I have no idea. He turned up out of the blue, I was due on duty so I treated him best I could, gave him some Ketamine and left him to sleep it off in my bunk.”

 

“Ketamine?” Hannibal was no medic but he knew a horse tranquiliser when he heard it.

 

“We’re using it more and more on patients in the field,” she shrugged, “Less addictive, less associated breathing difficulties.”

 

None of this made sense to Hannibal. Why would Face not want treating officially? Why didn’t he want his injuries listed on file? Why had he gone to Harris and not even mentioned it to Hannibal? And how the fuck did he even know her in the first place?

 

“We’ve… _met…_ before,” Hannibal didn’t realise he’d spoken that last question out loud. “In Germany. But I have no idea how he knew I was here.”

 

Because Face makes it his business to know where every possible ally and enemy is at any one time. In that way he can make sure he avoids the people he needs to avoid and tap those more useful contacts for favours whenever he needs to. Hannibal made sure he didn’t voice those thoughts aloud.

 

“Right,” whatever had happened, however, he needed to get things moving again. “I appreciate you helping out with this and hope he hasn’t put you in a difficult position.” Harris just took another long pull of her cigarette. “But now I need him back, there are reports that need writing for this mission. So if you’ll-”

 

“He’s in no state to write reports.”

 

Hannibal almost swallowed his tongue. “Excuse me?”

 

“I’m sorry, sir,” belatedly, Harris realised her mistake. “But he’s in a lot of pain. Some of the cuts needed stitching and he seems to have some chemical burns to his skin as well which I can do little for. He needs rest and he needs pain relief, neither of which are going to be helpful when writing reports.” 

 

Rubbing his forehead, Hannibal tried to push down the wave of nausea caused by the graphic picture Harris was painting in his head. He didn’t need Face for reports, he didn’t give a fuck about those, he just needed the kid in his bed where he could hold him and kiss him and try to get him to forgive what Hannibal had allowed to happen.

 

“You obviously know an awful lot more about what happened to him than I do,” Hannibal's eyes snapped up to meet Harris’ and she held her hands up in a response to the confrontation she saw in his stare, “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t _want_ to know either, but what I will say is this,” she stepped in a little, held her smouldering cigarette at her side out of the way and glanced cautiously around the dark night before she spoke. “It’s pretty obvious that he didn’t get those lacerations accidently,” Hannibal made sure his face was as impassive as he could get it. “And so… he needs to consider how he’s going to recover from this _mentally_.” If anything, Hannibal’s guilt twisted even more deeply. “It’s not going to be easy. Especially if he’s going to just try and pretend none of it even happened.”

 

Of course. Of course that’s what Face would do and it peeved Hannibal irrationally that this virtual stranger was the one standing here telling him that. “I can look after my own men, thank you very much. Sergeant,” he ground out through the tension in his jaw.

 

Harris stepped back and titled her head slightly as she regarded him. “I’m sure you can,” she took a last drag of her cigarette and then dropped it to the ground, signalling an end to their conversation. “He’ll hopefully sleep all night on the dose of Ketamine I gave him. I get off at 0600, I’ll head straight back and chuck him out then, send him back to you for his reports. That alright with you?” her obvious irritation with Hannibal wasn’t quite thick enough to allow her to be so disrespectful to a senior officer, even if that senior officer was from a completely different country. The, “Sir,” she tagged onto the end of her sentence may have been tardy but it was obviously meant.

 

Hannibal, however had more pressing things on his mind than insubordination. He offered nothing further than a nod before turning and vanishing into the blackness of the night.

 

His feet took him straight back to their silent prefab, Face’s aftershave faintly perceptible in the air around him as he flopped back onto his bunk and gave himself time to actually think about everything that had happened since the last time he lay there. 

 

He'd screwed up – that much was blatantly obvious, the question to consider now was how much and how could he make it better. Over ten years he’d known Face and they’d been intimate for almost all of that time - it was a long time to get to know someone, especially if you spent day after day after day with them in the most stressful of situations. Even if that someone was as complex as Face.

 

Hannibal had let him down, he’d promised, absolutely, hand on heart promised that Face would never have to go through something like that again and he’d meant it, he’d honest to God meant it but then… He rubbed a filthy hand over his brow, when it had come down to it, he hadn’t been able to go through with it. He closed his eyes and there it was again, two different times, two different decades but still it was Face who hung there, bleeding and agonised, and always it was Hannibal who was letting it happen.

 

Face did not forgive transgressions like that easily, in fact he didn’t forgive them at all. He was skittish by nature, very reluctant to trust, very easily burnt and never caught twice. Hannibal could well imagine the thoughts circling through his head as they’d fled Iran; how Hannibal had lied to him, how Hannibal had chosen to let Face suffer rather than save him, how nothing Hannibal had ever said to him could now be trusted. Nothing.

 

Hannibal wanted to cry. Not since the moment a very young Face had been taken from him on a landing strip in Kuwait, his skin shredded, his bones shattered, had Hannibal Smith shed a tear but now, in circumstances so appallingly similar, he wanted to do it again. The reasons were very different second time around, however. The first time he’d been mourning the loss of innocence, the possible loss of life whilst second time around he was already mourning the loss of his relationship. It might not happen immediately, they could limp on for years he was well aware, but shattering Face’s trust like he had was not something they would ever be able to mend.

 

“I’m sorry…” his head was pounding, he’d taken more than enough of his own injuries in the days since they’d left Amara and he hadn’t even gone to shower, never mind have them looked over. He slid down the bed and turned gingerly on his side, staring at the haphazard pile of Face’s belongings strewn about the little room until his eyes misted with tears. “Fuck, kid… I’m so sorry.” He never should have promised what he wouldn’t have the balls to deliver – that realisation started a wave of self-loathing so strong inside him that he almost threw up. Losing Face was what he deserved, kid needed someone better than him, someone who’d do the job properly, care for him as he deserved to be cared for.

 

With that thought, Hannibal let the days of stress and toil catch up with him and slid into a shallow and dream-riddled sleep.

 

________________

 

“Boss.”

 

The voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once and Hannibal was bolt upright on his bed before he was even awake.    

 

“Face…” Hannibal had been dreaming of Face in that room; Face as his nineteen-year old self, crying and begging for Hannibal to save him, a nightmare that Hannibal hadn’t had in ten years and the image was slow to leave him, slow to let him focus on the reality of the modern day around him.

 

A heavy silence fell as Hannibal scrubbed shaking hands across his face and Face hovered awkwardly in the doorway. Finally, Hannibal’s eyes cleared enough to focus in properly, Face looked good, a little beaten and bruised around the edges, a little pale and drawn, still wearing the black clothes he’d worn on the mission, but in testament to Harris’ organisational abilities, they’d obviously been washed and dried whilst Face slept so they were clean and free from the blood that had soaked them. If you didn’t know what Face had been through, you wouldn’t _know_ , never even guess and for some reason, that tore at Hannibal’s heart more than a little. “Kid…” his voice was embarrassingly rough. “I’m…” he cleared his throat, “How are you? How’re you-”

 

Face had taken a step back as soon as Hannibal started speaking and then his voice rang out, loud and clearly meant to drown the other man out. “Shit, Hannibal, did you even _shower_ last night? It _stinks_ in here.”

 

For a moment, Hannibal was too stunned to reply and so Face seized his chance, pushing on in the same overly loud and falsely bright voice. “You’d better get a hustle on. We’re booked on an 0950 transport back to Lwara. I’ve liaised with the General, he’s coming back with us, BA and Murdock are sorting and loading the kit, I’ve got a few things I need to pick up… there’s just you left really and you won’t be popular getting in a heli smelling like that. I’d go get cleaned-up if I was you.”

 

It wasn’t often that Hannibal was speechless; he blamed his broken night’s sleep and the cold edges of the nightmare that were still prodding his consciousness as he glanced at the watch on his wrist – it was only 0730, looked like Harris had been as good as her word about sending Face packing and he wondered why that irritated him so much.

 

But then, none of that was important, not if Face was hurting, was struggling, was wanting to lash out at Hannibal for what he’d allowed to happen. He looked up again, determined to have it out, but the doorway was empty and Face had – once again – gone.

 

_______________________

 

Three days later, Hannibal settled himself into a camp chair in the dark and silent tent the team shared and prepared to wait the long wait.

 

It had been a testing few days to say the very least. Back in Amara, in what now seemed like a different life-time, Hannibal had done as he’d been ‘ordered’ and helped himself to the longest shower that the camp could provide him. He’d been surprised by the state he was in, not the filth and the dried sweat, he was used to that after all these years, but the bruising and the swelling, the aching joints and the rather nasty cut on his shin. It was testament to how difficult the mission had been that he hadn’t even noticed any of that until he’d stripped off but still – it was nothing compared to what lay under Face’s clothes…

 

Clean and in fresh clothes, Hannibal had set off rejuvenated to eat and to track his wandering Lieutenant down; he should have realised that it would be far harder than he’d ever imagined. He walked miles that morning, asking around, going to the stores, the mess, Harris once more, the medical unit – nothing. Not only was he no-where to be found, no one he asked had even seen Face that morning. Hannibal was just starting to get worried, was just wondering if he should go and share his concerns with the team or the General, when he heard a familiar laugh from the far side of the heli-pad and there he was, looking relaxed and easy, smiling in the sun light that lit his hair on fire, supervising the loading of a pallet of boxes into the back of the Chinook.

 

The emotions tumbled through Hannibal with frightening speed. First came the crashing relief, Hannibal had been trying to ignore the little voice that told him that Face had collapsed somewhere, the blood loss finally catching up with him. Hot on its heels though was the anger – there he was, large as fucking life, living it up with ground crew whilst Hannibal was stalking the entire base searching for him… He set off at a fierce pace, his Colonel’s gait eating up the dust between them, his mind swirling around all the hot and angry things he was going to say to the little bastard, finally teach him a little respect and consideration and then it all changed again.

 

Face had bent over to read a label on a crate and as he did so, one the ground crew passed behind him, dropping a remark that Hannibal couldn’t quite catch as he went. Along with the remark was a friendly pat on the back and the reaction to that Hannibal _did_ catch. Face instantly slumped onto the crates, his arms holding his weight as his head went down. Everyone else had moved off, the landing pad was busy, but the space behind the Chinook was quiet and clear and Hannibal watched as Face took full advantage of that fact, letting the obvious pain wash through him, gritting his teeth against its waves even as his arms trembled and his complexion paled alarmingly.

 

Hannibal had stuttered to a shocked standstill but then he was on the move once more, his anger swallowed by a searing concern, love and pain and fresh guilt rising up inside him. He was beaten to it though, a cry of, “Face!” rent the air and instantly Face was upright once more, his easy smile back, his shades down to hide the pain in his eyes.

 

“Murdock. You all set to go?”

 

There was the slightest edge to that voice, just the very slightest hint that not all was well and Hannibal could have kicked himself for how close he’d come to being hoodwinked – he man was not called the Faceman for nothing after all.

 

“Sure am, buddy. Hey – you think they’d let me fly back?”

 

It was hard to say who looked the most alarmed at those words, BA, who was just rounding the corner with an armful of kit bags, or the British pilot who was about to step up into the cockpit. Face was quick though, Hannibal had to give him that, and smooth as he draped his arm over Murdock’s shoulders and guided him towards the rear door. “Nah… what’d you want to fly in an old hunk of trash like this one? I’m telling you, I’ve got this buddy in Lwara who’ll let you take up anything you like.”

 

“Anything I like?”

 

“Anything you like.”

 

“Even an X-32?”

 

“Absolutely an X-32,” if Face had no idea what on earth Murdock was on about, he wasn’t letting it show and Hannibal knew that, even if this was a Russian prototype that Murdock was on about, given enough time, Face would get him up in it, somehow or other. The kid was good, smooth. Smooth enough to lie to his entire team and almost, _almost_ , get away with it.    

 

_____________

 

Hannibal had sat silently on the trip back to Lwara, watching Face carefully as he feigned sleep. Now that he was aware, he could have kicked himself for how obvious it all was. He knew Face well, so, so well after the last eleven years they’d spent virtually living in each other’s pockets, but still he’d almost fooled him, almost let him be drawn into anger and hurt.

 

It wasn’t a pleasant realisation.

 

So, what was going on? Why would Face prefer to distance himself from Hannibal? Risk the other man’s wrath by deliberately making himself as unavailable as possible? After all, he hadn’t looked the older man’s way once since Hannibal had announced himself at the helipad. What was all that about?

 

There was only one answer, the same one that had come to Hannibal as he’d lay on his bunk and cried in the darkness – Face was done with him, Hannibal had let him down, had stood there and watched him tortured _again_. Would have let them maim him for life as well… wouldn’t he? Would he? He liked to think that the answer would have been a no, that he’d have stepped in before that knife had tried to cut away skin and flesh but the truth was he didn’t know, not entirely. He’d still been in denial, still been fighting against the impossible chains that held him, he hadn’t spoken up and that damned Arbab had been so close… so, so close…

 

Would he have let that happen? Fuck. If the answer was yes, then Face was right and Hannibal absolutely didn’t deserve him.

 

“Boss.”

 

A quiet voice and a hand on his knee had startled him back to awareness at that point and he had been shocked to realise that they’d landed without him even noticing. Face hovered over him a moment longer, his hand warm, his eyes hidden behind those damn shades and then he was off again, jumping from the heli, his voice ringing out as he threw out instructions for his boxes and crates and Hannibal let his head fall back to thump against the bulkhead.

 

Fuck.

 

___________

 

And that had been that for the rest of the day. Face was like Will o’ the Wisp, never in one place for more than a few minutes, never turning up where and when Hannibal expected him to, doing his job but keeping himself very, very scarce – at least from Hannibal that was.

 

At first Hannibal had been happy to let him have his space, let him work things out in his own time. Trying to rush Face into something he wasn’t ready for was akin to shaking up a bottle of beer and popping the lid. He’d been happy to let the kid have his time, have his space – that was until Face’s conversation with Morrison forced the issue and forced his hand…

 

He’d thought that once night fell, Hannibal would have him cornered, after all, sleeping away from the team’s tent would draw attention to himself, attention that he seemed very keen to shy away from, especially where Murdock and BA were concerned. But darkness came and still no Face, only, finally sneaking into the tent once the others were asleep and taking his bunk in the main section of the tent without going anywhere near the curtained off section to the rear that Hannibal had in deference to his rank.

 

Hannibal had blown out a long breath and lain awake, listening to the soft breaths of his team and the man he loved whilst mulling over the problem he found himself in.

 

The first issue was the tent itself. Before they had gone to Amara for this latest mission, Face had been in the middle of trying to arrange something better for the team as a whole, a solution that would keep them together but would allow Face and Hannibal to share a bed without tipping off the others as to the true nature of their relationship. It was a work in progress and so, far Face had had little luck. It had left them with no choice other than continuing to sleep alone; something they hadn’t had to regularly do for many a year.

 

Hannibal needed to get Face close to him. Ideally, he needed the dark and the physical proximity of being in bed to try and settle Face’s nerves. He wasn’t going to be able to get new barracking for his team anytime in the next few days, and so he’d been left with two options, one, taking both him and Face off-base or two, getting rid of Murdock and BA for a while. Whilst the first option was the most desirable, the second was the easiest and so, within twelve hours of returning from Amara, Murdock and BA found themselves on a transport over to Kabul and some very important orientation briefings that they had – so far –  managed to avoid.

 

If Hannibal had thought that removing Murdock and BA from the scene would have instant and pleasing results as far as Face was concerned, then he was to be very much disappointed when the whole day passed by and, yet again, there was no sign of the wandering Lieutenant. But he had to come back to the tent at some time, which is why Hannibal found himself in the ridiculous situation of sitting in the silent dark in case the kid was waiting for him to drop off before he showed his face; he honestly wouldn’t put it past him at all, but he _had_ to come back, he just had to.

 

The wait was another half an hour and Hannibal forced himself to remain still and calm and with his emotions locked tightly away and finally, finally, he was rewarded with a rather furtive opening of the flap and there – at last – was his errant Lieutenant.

 

Hannibal held his silence and watched Face’s silhouette as it straightened and scanned the room, watched it freeze in shock, could almost imagine the gears in Face’s mind whirring as he considered making a break back out again and then heard the sigh that signalled Face’s decision to stay.

 

“Boss.”

 

Hannibal leaned over and flicked on the lamp at the side of his canvas chair. “Face, good to see you, kid. How’s your day been?”

 

It was supposed to have been a non-confrontational way to start the conversation off, but judging by the way Face’s posture stiffened, it wasn’t the way that Face took it and, given what he knew about Face’s activities during the day, Hannibal really should have guessed that.

 

“Busy, you know.”

 

Oh, Hannibal knew only too well just how busy Face had been that day. He kicked out the chair opposite him. “Take a seat. Scotch?”

 

Hannibal had broken out the good stuff for this, had wondered about getting some ice as well but hadn’t wanted to find himself sitting next to a bucket of water if Face stood him up all night – that would have been just far too sad.

 

Face hovered, Hannibal watched as he glanced longingly at his bunk, but knew that some version of this conversation needed to happen today, knew that Face would realise that as well and waited until the younger man capitulated, sinking cautiously into the proffered chair in a way that made Hannibal even more anxious to see what was going on beneath those carefully neatened clothes. “Sure. Thanks.”

 

They sipped in silence, as they had done in far too many war zones around the world to possibly start counting. But their silence was usually close and comfortable, this time Hannibal felt that he was about a million miles away from the man sat right in front of him.

 

He’d been wondering how to start this, how to get the ball rolling when his initial introduction had been so off. He was just deciding that perhaps he’d pull the piece of paper out of his pocket and see what Face would say about when, as usual, the kid wrong footed him and beat him too it.

 

“So,” Face cleared his throat and took another mouthful of scotch. “You’ve spoken to the General then?”

 

Hannibal took a measured look at him. “Yes.”

 

“Right, okay. Well, the General says he doesn’t see that there’ll be any problems. He says that he thinks-”

 

“No problems?” Hannibal was finding it hard to remember he was supposed to be staying calm. “Kid – as far as I’m aware there are a _fuck_ load of problems with this.”

 

Face looked edgy, his brows drawing close together and his clever fingers tracing the crystal patterns of the tumblers he’d brought out for Hannibal to drink from. “Right,” he was stressed and anxious and that was so unlike his natural demeanour that it made Hannibal just want to grab him and hold him tightly. “Thing is though, boss, _Hannibal_ , I’m not –” he cleared his throat again and stared at the amber liquid in his glass. “I can’t… I can’t just sit here and wait for you to kick me out. I can’t do that, you can’t make me do that. After everything we’ve been through?” his piercing blue eyes met Hannibal's across the gloom of the tent. “At least let me leave on my own terms,” the words were whispered and it felt like they’d been dragged right from the kid’s very heart.

 

For a moment, Hannibal was stunned into silence, then he leaned forward, just stopping himself in time when he saw Face draw back from him a little. “Kick you out?” why was his own voice so damn rough? “Please tell me why in fuck’s name you think I’d ever do anything like _that_ to you?”

 

Uncertainty washed through Face’s expression and his frown deepened, his fingers tightened on the tumbler. “I…” he shook his head. “After the op. The way I screwed up, the trouble I got us into, got _me_ into. _Again._ ” His eyes fell to his boots. “You don’t trust me anymore. Can’t trust me to do my job and well, there’s no option then is there? Nothing else to do but to call it a day and that’s what I’m saying, no, _begging_ ,” his eyes were up again and Hannibal could see them shining in the dim light. “Don’t draw this out until everything we were is ruined,” the rough whisper was back. “Let me walk away. Let me come out of this with maybe a tiny shred of my dignity intact.”  

 

Hannibal's heart was pounding hard in his rib cage. The words Face had spoken had come through loud and clear but somehow didn’t make any sense in his head at all. Didn’t trust him? How on earth could Face even _start_ to think that?

 

“Okay, right,” that was Face again, rising to his feet and dropping the tumbler full of scotch heavily onto the table top. “Maybe it’d just be better if I slept somewhere else tonight. And tomorrow. My transfer’ll come through next week but the General says-”

 

“Why?” Hannibal was on his feet too, his own drink long forgotten. The only thought he could form into words was the one buzzing loudest through his head. “What have I done to make you think I don’t trust you?”

 

For a moment, Face just blinked at him, shuffling on his feet a little and Hannibal found himself wondering if they’d made any progress in their relationship at all over the last ten years. “I screwed up.”

 

“Face…”

 

“I led us into a trap.”

 

“ _Me_. What have _I_ done, kid? Why do you doubt me after everything we’ve been through?” the lack of answers was making Hannibal snappy.

 

“Hannibal please…”

 

“Tell me!”

 

“Okay! Fine!” Face’s nerves vanished in a flood of anger. “I told you that mission was off! I told you and told you and fucking told you! And would you listen to me? No – you fucking wouldn’t! Not until it was almost too late, not until we had no other choice left but to run straight into the lion’s mouth! And then what? You think I can put up and shut up and hold on long enough for Murdock and Baracus to sort something out? No, of course you don’t. You think I’m gonna fold like some damn pussy the second the going gets tough-”

 

“Face…”

 

“The second that dick with the knife went anywhere near me you expected, what? Me to scream and cry and beg you to come and save me? You thought I’d want you to let all those families, all those babies and old men drown in their homes for _me_? _Fuck_ you, Hannibal! That’s not me, I’m not that scared little boy anymore!”

 

“Jesus, Face… I never-”

 

But Face was too far gone to listen. “And what was that at the dam? What did you think I’d do then? Desert? Defect? Just screw the mission in general ‘cause I’m so fucking useless? You couldn’t risk letting me out of your sight in case I made an even bigger FUBAR than we already had? That’s why we needed the extra guys, right, Hannibal? I was becoming too much of a liability on my own? You thought you’d bring a couple of FNGs in to even up the odds? Help you out when I screwed up? You choosing which one you want to replace me in the end, then? When you ship me out you’ll have two ready-made replacements just waiting in the wings, right? And all these weeks you’ve had me running around after them, sorting their training and their kits and wiping their fucking _asses_ for them – preparing my own fucking _replacements_ , Hannibal! You expected me not to notice that?”

 

It was a torrent of hurt and betrayal that exploded out of Face with enough force to knock the wind from Hannibal's lungs. They stood staring at each other, Face’s chest heaving as he tried to haul himself back under control, Hannibal literally speechless, trying to equate this pain and confusion to the relationship he thought he’d had, the relationship that suddenly seemed so false and so far away from him.

 

“So, like I said,” Face was nothing if not a master of himself, pulling it all back, dragging himself back under control, straightening up, stepping back, preparing himself for what he had to do next. “Don’t make me sit here and wait for you to man up enough to tell me it’s over. Let me walk out now. The General’ll find me another team, I can be out of your life for good in minutes. You really want us to wait until we hate each other, here?”

 

The silence was crushing, the darkness outside their little well of light absolute as they stared at each other once more then, with a sigh, Face turned and walked straight out into the night.

 

Hannibal watched him go, like he was watching everything on CCTV, his usually quicksilver mind toiling through the facts he’d been given – facts that refused to make any sense at all. The tent fell into complete silence once more, Hannibal standing in between three empty cots that seemed to mock his plans for building one of the best Alpha Units ever known. Plans that had grown around Face, had evolved to play to Face’s strengths, that had been inspired by Face and the knowledge of the wonderful XO he could be for others. Plans, it seemed, that had ended up scaring the boy so hard that he’d forgotten everything that Hannibal had ever said to him. Forgotten everything they’d ever meant to each other.

 

Was Hannibal going to go for that? Was he going to let this be the way that it ended for them?

 

Fuck, no he wasn’t. Dropping his glass next to Face’s he burst out into the night, hot on the tracks of his fleeing XO.    

 

_____________________

 

The anger was something that Hannibal had been missing these last few days, stolen as it had been by terror, guilt and sorrow and a huge dose of self-pity. But now it was back and it burned through his veins with vicious power, clearing away everything that had fogged Hannibal down, everything that had hidden the absolute truth from him, a truth that he now saw as if it were written in neon in the sky; Hannibal had screwed up and then he’d left Face to deal with the effects of that alone. It wasn’t good enough, he hadn’t done well enough and he needed to start putting it all right. Now.

 

But, ten years remains a long time to know someone and Hannibal finally put that knowledge to use, stopping stock-still in their muted corner of the camp and trying to piece together where Face would go, what he would do. It didn’t take him long, and with his mouth set into grim determination, he was off.

 

They’d only been in this camp about a fortnight, Hannibal didn’t know it as well as some of the other camps they’d been stationed at over the years but he’d still seen all he needed to know and knew just where Face would go, just where he’d hide himself until he’d made whatever plans he felt he needed to leave. Or at least Hannibal hoped he knew him that well.

 

The watch tower was fenced off, officially classed as unsafe and awaiting demolition. It had been almost the very first structure erected at Lwara and was now superseded by a network of far more substantial buildings. It had seen better days, was abandoned and unloved and sitting in a dark corner just waiting to be thrown away by the Army that built it – Hannibal could see how it would appeal in Face’s eyes.

 

At first he thought he’d miscalculated, the viewing platform seemed dark and empty when Hannibal first hauled himself up through the ragged whole in the floor, but a sweep with his pen light soon illuminated the still and silent figure crushed into the far corner and, supressing a sigh, Hannibal crawled over to flop, not quite touching, at Face’s side.

 

They sat there in silence, Face’s anger seemed to have deserted him and Hannibal could almost taste the cold despair that had rushed in to take its place. Hannibal’s was still burning fiercely inside him, caged and corralled where it could drive him on but he would make sure it stayed focussed in on himself, where it was deserved, not on Face who had obviously spent far too many days berating himself as it was. Face seemed in no hurry at all to re-open their discussion and Hannibal was planning, there was no way he was going to mess this up again, not when he felt they were so close to losing it all.

 

“Face, I’m sorry.”

 

It wasn’t the most exciting of starts, but Hannibal knew they needed to get going somehow and that would get Face’s attention – Hannibal wasn’t known for apologising – and it would also set a tone for how things were going to go, let Face know that he wasn’t the one on trial here.

 

Sometimes Hannibal forgot this about Face, in the early days they’d talked a hell of a lot as all the kid’s insecurities had been set out there clear as day for Hannibal to see. But time had passed and Face had grown into this wonderful man who oozed confidence and charisma and Hannibal tended to forget about the frightened little boy who hid inside. But he was still there, would always be there, as times like this, as few and far apart as they were now, proved.

 

“Hannibal, please…” the defeat in that tone was excruciating to listen to. “Don’t make this any worse than it is.”       

 

“We need to talk,” the dejection just fuelled Hannibal's determination. “There are things that need saying, things that are long overdue.”

 

Silence. Hannibal could well imagine Face fighting with his emotions whilst wondering if he could get down the escape hatch before Hannibal hauled him back and sat on him. For once, the boy’s choice of hidey-hole had backfired on him.

 

“Let’s start with the professional side of things, shall we? Let’s start with Murdock and BA.” Even in the darkness, Hannibal could see Face slump at that which only went to reinforce what a good place to begin it was. “I’m really not sure what you think is going on here, kid,” and this time Face bristled. “And I know it’s because we’ve not talked about it, which is why we are now.” He shook his head, “Murdock and BA – they’re not your _replacements_ , kid, of course they’re not. They never were and they never will be, okay? They’re your _team_. You know Russ had been leaning on me to expand, you know he wanted us to take on bigger and riskier missions, you know he wanted us to have back up.”

 

Silence.

 

Hannibal fought back the urge to sigh, fought back the urge to grab Face round the neck and shake some sense into him. _Did_ he know any of that? He damn well should have done but then with Face you just never knew. The first few weeks with the new team _had_ been difficult, Hannibal had still been pissed with Face over the Tuco incident, maybe hadn’t explained things well enough to his second, _or explained them at all_ , an unhelpful voice whispered in his ear. Face had over-reacted, had resented his new team-mates, had been awkward and surly and Hannibal had had a job to talk him around.

 

He was just beginning to realise that maybe nothing had been solved back then, that maybe he’d just put a dressing over a wound that Face had continued to pick at for all these months. He needed to stop assuming where he was with regards to Face and start actually checking instead.

 

There wasn’t the time for that now, though. Hannibal would have to start the long process of convincing Face where he stood in regards to the others just as soon as they’d covered a few more pressing issues. He moved on.

 

“So, you need to forget the bit about being replaced – it’s never going to happen, and let’s move onto the part where I don’t trust you.”

 

If anything Face’s shoulders dropped even lower at those words.

 

“I didn’t listen to your doubts about the mission; I was wrong, that was me being… _me_ and I’m sorry, kid. It was nothing to do with you and everything to do with me being over confident, caught up in the jazz, so convinced I’m never going to be wrong.”

 

Still nothing came from Face.     

 

“On the dam? You thought I didn’t trust you to do your job properly? Face – when have you never done your job? I just…” he rubbed his fingers over eyes that were suddenly stinging. “It was me again. Me not doing _my_ job properly. I couldn’t stand the thought of letting you out of my sight for even a moment. It was unprofessional and dangerous – and even worse than that if it made you doubt yourself. It was just me.”

 

Silence.

 

“And what had happened before that –” Hannibal shook his head. “That wasn’t your fault, kid, how in God’s name would you ever think that is _was_? Yet again you were put in a position you should never have been in. You were forced to go through something-” Hannibal's voice tightened so much it was hard to force the words out. “Fuck, kid. No one deserves that. I told you that before and it’s still so, so true. You said I didn’t trust you to suffer in silence – it wasn’t that. I just _couldn’t_ , Face. Can’t you see that? I love you, so damn much, I couldn’t let that happen to you again.”

 

“I could handle it. I did handle it.” Face’s first words and his voice was rough with supressed emotion.

 

“Jesus, kid, I know you did…” Hannibal couldn’t stand it any longer and blindly reached out to grab Face’s hand, to wrap those long fingers up in his own as he fought to stay away from the memories of those awful, awful hours. “But that’s not the point. The point is you shouldn’t have had to. The point is I should have been able to stop it all for you. Should have been able to protect you. The fault’s all mine, Face. The failure is all mine.”   

 

“Hannibal, don’t.” Face turned in the dark so that Hannibal could feel his warm breath on his cheek. “Don’t blame yourself, boss, I can’t stand it. Can’t stand that I put you in that position!”

 

“No!” the anger was back and this time it _was_ headed Face’s way. How could the kid do this? How could he persist in heaping all this blame on his own shoulders when it was all Hannibal's to carry? “It was me who put _you_ in that position! Think back to the talk we had in the tree before we headed out. What if I’d taken you on then? What if we’d pulled the mission back then? You never would have had to go through any of that pain…”

 

“I should have made my point better…”

 

“I should have listened.”

 

They slid into silence once more, their fingers still entwined, not for the first time, Hannibal wishing he could see into Face’s head. “Face…” all of his planned words had vanished in the memories of what he’d allowed to happen to the man he loved. “I don’t want you to leave me. Not my team, not my unit… fuck, kid… not me.”

 

The hand in his tightened. “Hannibal…” and the pain in that one word was almost more than Hannibal could stand. “I’m sorry I screwed up, I’m sorry I put you through all that.” Hannibal closed his eyes – when would the damn kid ever _learn_? “I wish I’d never said anything, wish we’d just blown that fucking dam and come home.”

 

“No,” Hannibal rounded him in the dark. “Don’t you see what you did? Don’t you see what you saved us from?”

 

“Not _this_ , that’s for sure.”

 

Hannibal suddenly realised that Face _didn’t_ know, that he’d done such a good job of hiding from Hannibal these last few days that he’d missed the updates that had brought it home just how lucky an escape they’d had. He turned on his side, his palm finding Face’s cheek, his eyes trying to bore into Face’s own in the darkness. “No, you did good, kid. Real good. We’d been set up by that prick Brown, but not just us, _everyone_. He’d been taking bribes from some Iranian separatist group, had hundreds of thousands of dollars paid into an account. Wanted us to blow that dam, kill all those people and then have us carry the can for it as fucking terrorists. We’d have been splashed all over the world, public enemy number one, it’d have caused reprisals, thousands of people would have died, not just with that dam, all over the world, it’d be their 9/11, kid. And _we’d_ have been the ones who did it. It would have been the end of _everything_ , Temp, fucking everything. And _you_ saw it, you dodged it, you saved us both when I’d have led us right into it all.”

 

He stopped, could just see the gleam of Face’s eyes as he watched him, waited, wanted Face to see what he’d done, what he’d saved them from. He felt the cheek under his hand slowly move as Face shook his head. “Fuck… that bastard. Where is he now?”

 

“Vanished,” Hannibal leaned back, sliding his palm away but leaving their fingers entwined as he turned and put his back against the wall next to Face once more.  

 

They slid into an uncomfortable silence as Hannibal mulled over if what he’d said had been enough, if it could ever be enough to make up for the way things had gone, the way he’d let them go.

 

“You know I love you, right?”

 

Hannibal's gut tightened; there was no way that Face’s words could be described as anything other than ominous in his eyes. He turned slightly to take in Face’s still profile, “I do.”

 

“The thing is though…” and now Hannibal’s heart was pounding hard. “We can’t go on like this. Not if you don’t trust me.”

 

Hannibal closed his eyes, “Face,” the word was barely a breath, “We’ve been over this, I _do_ trust you. In absolutely every way there is.”

 

“No, you don’t.” Face sounded strangely calm. “You don’t trust me not to break you if I get myself hurt.”

 

This time it was like a blow to the chest and for a minute Hannibal wasn’t sure he could breathe, never mind speak. “Face-”

 

“You know, boss, you’ve apologised for so many things, but you’ve never really seemed to see what the actual problem is here.” Again Hannibal was speechless, gaping like a fish, his mind racing over issues and possibilities as fast as he could make it, but Face was right; he just didn’t see. “Do you remember what you promised me? The last time this happened?”

 

Was that what it was? Was that the thorn that was needling Face so badly? “I promised you it would never happen to you again,” Hannibal murmured. “And I’m sorry. I _do_ realise that’s an issue now. I should never have promised what I couldn’t deliver.”

 

“No,” there was a hint of irritation in Face’s voice that worried Hannibal. “That’s not it. And to keep me safe you tried to make me leave… You told me I was better off in civilian life.”

 

“That’s not quite it…” Nevertheless, Hannibal’s cheeks heated at the memory.

 

“What then?”

 

“I just felt you’d be safer, that’s all. You were a nothing more than a kid – no kid deserved to go through what you did. _Have._ ”

 

He felt Face nod next to him and gripped the hand in his even more tightly. “Of course. Makes sense. And you give that advice to every teenage soldier that you come across, right?”

 

Hannibal spun on his hip. “No! Of course I don’t! Only you because you’re the only one-”

 

He ground to a sudden stop and Face huffed out a dry laugh. “Yeah. See what I mean?”

 

The silence was back as Hannibal toyed with this new perspective.

 

“You know I love you,” he eventually offered. “Just like you love me. Let’s not forget that you let them get started on you just to save me from a bullet. How is this different?”

 

“How is this different?” the bite was back in Face’s voice. “It’s different because I couldn’t afford for them to shoot your damn knee cap off! How the hell would we have made a run for it when Baracus and Murdock made their move if your leg was blasted all to hell?”

 

“And how did you know they weren’t going to do something like that to _you_? How did you know you would still be in a position to make a break for it?”

 

“Because I trusted your men,” Face shot back, “and I understand the nature of torture. They want you piss-scared and in pain, they don’t want you bleeding out or passing out before they can finish their fun! They were never going to do anything more than play with me.”

 

“Play with you!” Hannibal was incensed. “Face, they were going to _maim_ you!”

 

“How many people would have died, right there that day, if we’d blown that dam?”

 

“What?” Hannibal turned away, “Face I don’t see what this-”

 

“How many?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Thousands?”

 

“Probably.”

 

“Plus everything you’ve just told me about Brown-”

 

“Hindsight, kid,” Hannibal ground out.

 

“- and you would have done that? You’d have sacrificed all those people for me?”

 

Hannibal was silent.

 

“What about Grant McInnerery?” Hannibal’s eyes narrowed at the mention of nemesis since West Point days. “Would you have done it if it had been him up there?”

 

“Face – he’s a fucking soldier! That’s what he signed up for, that’s what you have to be if-”

 

Yet again Hannibal ground to a sudden halt as his brain caught up with his mouth and Face’s dry little laugh was back. “Yeah.”

 

“Kid,” Hannibal was on his hip again, watching Face in the darkness. “That means nothing! McInnerery’s a prick and-”

 

“Hannibal – for God’s sake stop treating me like a fucking idiot!”

 

Silence fell once more and Face disentangled his hand, pulling it back out of Hannibal's reach with a long sigh. He was right, Hannibal could see that now, and how had he never even noticed it had been happening? Ten years since Iran – had it being going on all that time? No… Hannibal was fairly certain of that but that had been because they’d been part of a far bigger unit. Bunter, Jonno, Piper, Sharkie, Keo, Gem… they’d all been there to watch out for Face when Hannibal couldn’t. He was everyone’s little brother, never went anywhere alone, always someone there to watch his back.

 

It had started once they’d formed their elite unit of two, Hannibal’s delight at getting Face to himself day after night after day after night soon evaporated in the fear he felt every time Face had to go off on his own, every time they had to split up for an operation which was just about every time they went out. Looking back now, Hannibal could see himself in his mind’s eye as he tried to keep them closer and closer, tried to make sure that he did all of the dangerous things, that Face would be safe, no matter what, Face would be safe.

 

And of course, how had Face reacted to that? Well, he’d pulled away as much as he possibly could, started doing stupid solo stunts like the one with Tuco that had just about been his end. And Hannibal had finally given in to Russ’ demand to expand a little and why? So that there’d be someone else there to watch the kid’s back, of course. He’d have died for certain if Hannibal hadn’t run into BA that scorching morning in Mexico – seemed to make sense to get the man on-board full-time to try and protect what was most important to him.

 

_Did_ he trust Face to do his job? To have Hannibal’s back? To be an excellent XO for this new team? Fuck – yes, without a doubt. It was the _other_ idiots out there he didn’t trust, bastards like Arbab and Brown and Tuco and that pyscho General from ten years ago. Bastards who would hurt his boy, main him, violate him, _kill_ him and what would that do to Hannibal? God, it would destroy him, there was absolutely no doubt in his mind at all about that.

 

“You see it all now, boss?” And Face even knew him well enough to know he needed time to work it all out for himself…  

 

“Face…” what the hell could he say?

 

“So, going back to my original question - do you remember what you promised me? The night you followed me up to the Observatory?”

 

Hannibal couldn’t help the quirk in his lips at the memory. It had been a far from pleasant day, but, yet again, it was his boy’s love of high places that had allowed Hannibal to track him down. The quirk quickly vanished though – had they really made so little progress together in all that time? How had they come full circle to Face feeling he needed to run from Hannibal because of the way things were going between them?

 

“Boss?”

 

He floundered for a moment, was unsure of the question he was supposed to be answering but then it all came back to him, that night, the crowds at the Observatory, the balmy air, finding Face hiding in the scrub with the snakes and the scorpions… He’d tried to make the kid come back with him, tried to apologise but Face had held out, wanted Hannibal to promise him that he wouldn’t treat him any differently if they were together, wanted to know if the Colonel understood that Face could handle anything that was thrown his way. Hannibal had agreed and promised he understood, but really? There would have been very little he _wouldn’t_ have agreed to at that time – just to get Face back.  

 

“You lied to me.”

 

“I didn’t lie. You know I wouldn’t do that to you.”

 

“Do I?” the bite was unwelcome.

 

“Face – please just come back with me. We can sort this out, you know we can.”

 

“And I would like it sorting out now.”

 

A surge of irritation ran through Hannibal – God damn, the kid could be so _stubborn_ when he wanted to be. “Honestly, I don’t know what you want me to say. We went over this back then and I promised you. You want the same promise again? Why would I need to do that?”

 

“Because you lied to me.”

 

“I didn’t lie!” The words reverberated around their little hideout and Hannibal flushed; only Face could ever do this to him, make him so crazy that he just didn’t know which way was forward.

 

They slid into silence once more, Hannibal's mind whirling round and around the issues that Face had thrown out, still unsure how any of them could be dealt with, if Face even wanted them dealing with. What was he asking? For Hannibal to stop _caring_?

 

“I think it’d be best if I took that transfer the General offered me.”

 

“He didn’t offer,” now Hannibal had the bite, “you asked.”

 

“Same thing.”

 

“It’s not!” Hannibal spun to face his lieutenant in the dark once more. “If you asked to leave it means it’s what you want. You _want_ out of the unit, you _want_ away from me!”

 

“Hannibal,” finally a crack in Face’s façade, “of course I don’t want away from you.”

 

Hannibal saw his opening and went for it, feeling like his chances were dissolving around him with every beat of his heart. “Then what is all this? I’m sorry I caved in like I did, I’m sorry I almost gave them what they wanted, but, shit, Face – you really expect me to be able to stand by and watch them _torture_ you if I can stop it? Forget about the bull-shit about leg injuries, could you have done it? If it had been me? Could you have stood and _watched_?”

 

The silence from Face told Hannibal everything and he studied the silhouette of the man who was everything to him as he sat, head down, in the dark.

 

“What do you want, Face?” his voice was nothing more than a whisper. “Tell me, exactly, what you want out of this.”

 

For a long time, he felt that Face wasn’t going to answer but then there was a slight shift in posture and a long, shuddering breath and Hannibal froze, waiting.

 

“I need to know if I’m on this team on merit, or just because we fuck. And I need to know that you trust me to do my job and you’ll treat me the same as any of the others, no special favours just because of what we do.”

 

“What we _are_ ,” Hannibal corrected automatically. “You know it’s more than just fucking.”

 

He watched Face nod slightly, his head still bent, “Okay.”

 

Hannibal let those questions twist around in his head as he shifted onto his knees and shuffled right in to Face's side. “Okay, so the team. You’re on this team because you are the absolute, fucking best at what you do. At what _we_ do and honestly kid, I’ve spent ten years telling you that.”

 

Face remained silent.

 

“And will I treat you the same?” Hannibal risked a hand creeping out to slide around Face’s cheek and tilt his head so they were looking at each other best they could in the gloom. “I’ll try my best kid, honest to God I will but…” he shook his head. “Sometimes you take risks you shouldn’t and the truth is I just love you so much… But I’ll try to let you have your space, let you do your own thing, if you promise to take better care of yourself sometimes. Yes – there is a fear I have that I’ll lose you, but, answer me honestly, kid, don’t you have it too? About me?”

 

There was a long moment of silence then Face’s hand, his fingers cold in the desert night, slid up to rest over Hannibal’s. “Yeah…”

 

Hannibal blew out a long breath and lay their foreheads together. “Then you understand how it’s not always that easy. Not if you feel the same.”

 

“But I’m not the one with all the power in this relationship,” Face countered softly and Hannibal huffed out a little laugh.

 

“Kid – I don’t think you will ever understand just how much power you have over me. Always have, always will.”

 

Face didn’t answer that, didn’t respond, didn’t move and gradually Hannibal began to feel a little foolish knelt as he was with his head pressed to Face’s. He shifted away, back onto his butt, pressed up against Face from shoulder to ankle and then the pair of them slid into silence as they contemplated the truths spoken that evening.

 

“Face…” Hannibal was depressingly out of ideas. “I’m not good at this type of thing, kid. You need to talk to me, tell me what you want. You want to stay in the team?”

 

“Of course.”

 

The weight on Hannibal’s chest lightened just a touch.

 

“And you believe me? When I say I’ll try?”

 

There was a pause, long and heavy and then, “Yeah…”

 

Warm relief washed through Hannibal with that single word and he let his hand fall down onto Face’s leg. “And you’ll be careful? You’ll remember what you mean to me? You’ll take care of that?”

 

He could almost feel Face’s tentative smile in the darkness. “I’ll try.”

 

Groping for Face’s fingers in the dark, Hannibal closed his eyes. “So… you’ll come back? To the tent with me? Now?”

 

The wait seemed to stretch for hours but finally a little squeeze to his fingers signalled Face’s response was coming. “Yeah.”

 

The relief was so sharp it was like a scalpel.

 

_______________

 

They walked back to the tent in near-silence, Hannibal feeling as oddly nervous as he had done in the very first weeks of their relationship. He supposed that a near-ending could do that to a man.

 

As soon as the flaps were drawn, they stood and faced each other, Face having difficulty quite meeting Hannibal’s eye.

 

Hannibal knew he had a role to play here, knew that Face would never be able to get his head around how equal they were, how equal they always had been, and would need Hannibal to step up and take the lead from time to time. This was one of those times and Hannibal was more than happy to do it. “Come here,” he whispered, closing the space between them. “It feels like months since I’ve been able to hold you.”

 

It wasn’t until Face was in his arms, warm and relatively whole, clutching back and breathing raggedly against Hannibal's neck that it hit him how _cold_ he’d been these last days. Since that awful moment in an innocuous briefing room in Iran when he’d awoken to find an unconscious Face chained to the chair next to him, he’d had an icy fear that had gripped his heart. Now he could actually feel it melting, washed away by the undeniable proof that they’d made it, cheating death and disaster one more time.

 

“God, I’ve missed you.” His fingers crept up into Face’s hair, his nose pressed into the juncture of neck and shoulder, his other arm wrapped tightly around firm shoulders and he just revelled in the luxury of having Face near him – but then he remembered.

 

“Fuck,” he almost propelled Face off his feet he was pushed away so quickly. “Your injuries. Let me see. I can’t believe you didn’t get looked at properly.”

 

Face rolled his eyes as he stepped away from Hannibal. “I did, Harris is a nurse, remember, and they’re fine, I’m fine.”

 

He tried to shrug away but Hannibal had had enough of being held at arm’s length. “Face…” and since it was in that tone of voice that Face knew meant business, he contented himself with a sigh and a shake of the head as he reached up and stripped off his t-shirt.

 

Considering Hannibal had _been_ there and had watched every one of those cuts being carefully and sadistically placed, it should never have shocked him so much to see the state that Face was in scant days later. “Oh, Face…”

 

“I’m fine! For fuck’s sake, Hannibal!” Face spun away again, reaching to snatch his t-shirt back from the floor but Hannibal was quicker, snagging his wrist and stopping him, then just looking at him, silent, his eyes full of such pain and sorrow that Face was instantly back in his arms. “It’s not your fault,” he whispered as they clung to each other, “and it’s fine Hannibal, I swear to you, it’s fine.”

 

Hannibal wondered how on earth he could possibly say that, what kind of skewed definition of ‘fine’ he carried around in his head but allowed it to pass uncommented. “You’ll let me check you over?” it was asked quietly, tenderly, against Face’s neck and with a barely perceptible sigh, Face nodded. “Come here then.”

 

He took Face’s hand, an action that seemed new and thrilling despite the fact that they’d been doing it, in private, for many a year and led him to his own curtained off bunk behind the crude curtain at the back of the tent. “We need to get something done about sleeping arrangements in this place,” he’d growled under his breath as he guided Face into lying flat on his belly. “That okay?”

 

“Sure.”

 

Hannibal went for the first-aid kit and, when he returned, made sure that he kept his gaze focussed on one cut at a time, he knew that if he leant back, let his eyes roam over the full extent of Face’s injuries he would be swallowed by rage and despair once more.

 

He worked quickly and methodically, as they always did when they cared for one of their own, starting at the top and working downwards, cleaning with antiseptic wipes, checking stitches, changing dressings, applying numbing balm – whatever was required – and by the time that he was done, Face’s eyes were closed as his head was pillowed on his forearms.

 

“Face? Sweetheart? You there, baby?”

 

Hannibal's hand smoothed back over-long hair and Face’s lips quirked into a little smile. “Yeah,” Hannibal was relieved to find some of that tension had dissipated from his voice, “Your hands just feel so good, boss. Always have.”

 

That pulled an answering smile from Hannibal as he leant down to press a kiss against Face’s temple; he could almost feel them sliding back together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “Turn over.”

 

Face did, and Hannibal watched him carefully as he did so, saw the flashes of pain that couldn’t quite be hidden. “You manage?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

The situation on the front was pretty much the same as he’d just seen. The blade’s whorls and swirls were in various depths and various stages of healing. Some were clearing away nicely and Hannibal satisfied himself with a quick wipe over and maybe a smear of balm. Others had been covered and needed a more thorough cleaning before fresh, sterile dressings were placed in return and gently smoothed into place. There were patches of skin that still showed the evidence of chemical burns and those he could only soothe with the balm and then there were two or three cuts, usually placed around muscles that pulled and flexed all day, which were having trouble healing, had maybe pulled their stitches out and needed a little more care and attention.

 

“Why didn’t you want to go to Medical?” Hannibal asked quietly as he worked to close a stubborn wound with butterfly strips.

 

The corresponding silence was long, Hannibal had all but given up on getting an answer as he methodically worked along the length of the cut, tugging the edges as close as he could in order to minimise scaring, but finally Face’s chest rose as he prepared his answer. “I couldn’t,” the word was hardly more than a breath.

 

“Why?”

 

“How can I have that on my records?” the plaintive note to Face’s voice was heart-breaking. “Again? Really, John, what are they going to think of me? The brass?”

 

The use of Hannibal’s given name, incredibly rare out of the throes of passion, told Hannibal that they were out of role for this one, that Face wasn’t happy having this conversation with his superior and desperately wanted it with his partner. Hannibal stopped what he was doing and took Face’s hand up once more, looking into eyes that were full of fear – and shame. “They’ll think you were doing your job under incredibly difficult circumstances.” Face closed his eyes. “They’ll offer you support to help you cope and they’ll acknowledge what you went through in the name of your duty.”

 

Behind his eyelids, Face shook his head, “They’ll think I’m weak.”

 

“Because you were _tortured_? Face – how does that work?”

 

“Because I should have stopped it happening. Because I should have been faster, tougher, smarter, _better_ and then they would never have got me in the first place.”

 

For a moment Hannibal was speechless. This was a man that no one else but him ever saw and his heart swelled at the proof of how much Face must trust him to let him in even as his stomach proportionately tightened with desperate sadness that his boy actually _thought_ these things. This wasn’t the carefully constructed ‘Face’ he was seeing here, this was the very real and very damaged man that ‘Face’ was designed to protect.

 

He let his hand stray up to cup a stubbled jaw. “You couldn’t possibly be any _more_ any of those things in my eyes, Temp. It wasn’t you, it was…” he wanted to say ‘ _me_ ’, he felt it certainly was him, his decisions that had led them to that room, but he also knew Face well enough to realise that that would just lead to another round of arguments; Face seemed to see Hannibal as infallible as he himself was flawed. 

 

“It was circumstance, _fate,_ ” he instantly regretted that using that substitution, however, could just see how Face would twist it around in the future to feel that it was his lot in life to be used and abused, “Nothing that any of us could do anything about. But we handled it, you got us out.”

 

“Murdock and Baracus got us out.”

 

“They provided the opportunity, you made it work, kid, don’t gloss over that fact.” Face slid into silence once more, his eyes still closed and Hannibal gently petted his cheek. “And that’s why you don’t want them to know either, huh? You’re worried what they will think of you?”

 

Face’s eyes flew open and Hannibal was just waiting for the petulant, ‘I don’t care what they think of me!’ when he just seemed to deflate once more and instead, “What does that matter? Baracus thinks I’m jerk already…” was whispered out into the night.

 

Hannibal felt his heart crack just a little more, “Kid – you _act_ like a jerk around him, you know you do.”

 

There was no answer to that, Face just closed his eyes once more and Hannibal leant to press a kiss onto his forehead before going back to tending his wounds.

 

It took maybe another twenty minutes before Hannibal was finished and when he sat back and looked at Face, he wondered if he were sleeping, he was so still and relaxed. But under his steady gaze, Face’s eye lids flickered and then opened and a tentative smile was sent his way, “Thanks, boss.”

 

Hannibal's eyes crinkled in response, “Any time, sweetheart.” Though he hoped – with all his heart – that there _never_ would be another time. Almost as if the thought was reflected in Face’s mind, his hesitant little smile wavered and vanished and Hannibal’s face fell in return. “It’s okay,” instantly his hand was back on Face’s cheek, thumb stroking under his eye, the need to comfort and _solve_ almost overpowering within him. “It’s okay, it’s okay…” shuffling and shoving, Hannibal managed to get himself onto the narrow cot alongside Face without tipping either of them off. He then gathered the long body in front of him close to his chest, revelling at having Face with him once more but devastated to feel the great heaving breaths that told him how close to the edge Face was. “It’s alright, sweetheart, it’s all okay, now.”

 

Face’s arms slid around him and locked on tight, the tension in every muscle more than evident. It was as if, now he’d allowed the bands around his emotions to loosen slightly, he was worried that his entire body would shake apart if he let them shift any further. Tightening them back up again, however, was the last thing that Hannibal needed him to do; Face had obviously been operating on emotional-lockdown these last few days, going back down that route would be counter-productive.

 

“It’s okay, I’ve got you. Let go, baby, let it all out.” Face was shuddering in his arms now, every muscle pressed against Hannibal was iron-taut but he didn’t speak, didn’t make any form of answer at all, just held on with his death grip, juddering breaths jarring against Hannibal's efforts to match their breathing. Hannibal was just starting to feel his concern ratchet up, was wondering if the kid were having some kind of actual panic attack, when everything just seemed to flow away from them, Face’s grip loosened, his breathing eased and, when he pulled back again, his expression had lost its desperate edge.

 

Hannibal looked at him, wondering who this was, how much of his Face and how much of some manufactured stunt-double. “Kid…?”

 

“I’m okay, John.” Barely a breath and a clear sign that they were off the clock.

 

“Are you?”

 

A long close of the eyes, a tiny sigh and then a fluttering opening. “Of course.”

 

Hannibal smoothed his hair back, “You don’t have to pretend with me.”

 

“I’m not pretending; I’m dealing.”

 

Hannibal’s heart sank; with Face he guessed they were actually one and the same thing but what to say? What on earth could he do without shattering that so-very-fragile self-confidence?

 

“Maybe you don’t need to deal alone.”

 

Face frowned at that, the sight tugging at Hannibal’s heart. “I’m not. I have you.”

 

“You do,” he dipped in for a kiss, soft and gentle, a promise and a caress and he could feel through the languid way it was returned how tired Face was, wondered how much sleep he’d had in recent nights, but still, this needed dealing with. “Maybe you need something else as well. Maybe this time you should see a-”

 

Face’s fingers were on his lips, his eyes were locked on Hannibal’s own, a silent plea in there that was far from unexpected. “No, I don’t. I just need this – that’s all.”

 

The moment stretched out, Face held his eyes, held him still and steady until he caved in like he had many a time before.

 

It never made him feel good about himself.

 

He couldn’t say it was alright, because it wasn’t. Face had never fully recovered from the mental trauma of that first time in Iran, had ditched his assigned counsellor and tried to exorcise his own demons. He’d passed his pysch-eval though, after that, managed to say enough of the right things so that they could label him untouched by the incident. Hannibal knew damn well that that was why Face wanted all of this current trauma sweeping under the carpet as quickly as possible – knew he was terrified that, if it were reported, they’d make him attend counselling and that the counsellor would uncover a whole can of worms that Face was desperately trying to bury.

 

So, what did that make Hannibal then? For being complicit in the whole scheme? An effective and supportive CO? No. A concerned and compassionate lover? No. It made him a coward – one that was too damn scared of what it would do to them both if he insisted and that knowledge was like a fire-worm inside him, burrowing ever deeper to burn and fester.

 

The coward in him still won out though and he lay down again at Face’s side, tugging him close and pulling the sleeping bag over them both. “You’ve got this,” he promised and that at least was true, “you’ll always have this.”

 

Face fell asleep almost instantly after that; emotionally and physically exhausted. Hannibal didn’t however; he stayed awake, wondering and deliberating and finally planning and, by the time the camp started to come to life around them, he had a strategy in his head that would sort this for Face, would expel the demons from both disastrous incursions into Iran, would help him to see how important he was in Hannibal's team and life, and then generally cement them both as equals in what he knew would be a long-term relationship. It wasn’t going to be a fast-fix, but it was a process he could start now and work on for however long it took.

 

Face was worth it after all – God, he was worth anything that Hannibal could ever do for him.     

 

_________________    

 

The night was hot and Face could feel his shirt sticking to his back as he wound his way through the crowds on his way to, what he hoped, would be his final destination. The evening had been long and frustrating but he understood why, Jordan was a predominantly Muslim country, men arranging to meet other men had to be very careful; even if homosexuality wasn’t exactly illegal it certainly paid to be cautious. Face had had the run-around all evening and it was only at this late hour, when he’d actually threatened to call the whole thing off, that he felt he may actually be on the verge of meeting the man he’d set out to spend the evening with.

 

His phone buzzed in his pocket once more and he took it out, a smile breaking over his face as he took in the message and the picture that had come with it. “What are you wearing?” he’d asked as his long legs ate up the sidewalk, “How will I recognise you?” and there was his answer, a thin, undeniably nervous looking face, close cropped afro hair, thinly grown beard and moustache, white shirt, clearly damp with sweat even in the tiny photo, a wall behind him, two walls maybe – a corner booth. Face’s smile widened. Perfectly discrete, just as he’d requested.

 

And then he was there, Shati Albahr Coffee, not the most exotic of the coffee houses he’d trawled around that evening, but he supposed its less than salubrious front was exactly what he and his new friend required. He nodded to the bouncer at the entrance and immediately cut to the left, back to the wall, allowing himself a good look at what was inside.

 

The place was full of men, not a single female to be seen but that meant nothing. The culture of the country meant that groups of single females tended to frequent organised family functions, where there would be a mix of ages and sexes to help chaperone them and a married man would never dream of taking his wife out to a dive like this. Men socialised with men, gay or straight and to be honest, before men were married off, there was very little difference between the two.

 

Face spotted him almost straight away, crushed into a corner, his eyes flicking round and around the room as nervous fingers fiddled with his espresso cup. Three more cups lay abandoned on the table top and Face’s eyes narrowed – the guy was probably wired, he hoped that wouldn’t be a problem.

 

Staying back against the wall he fired off a quick text and waited, watched as the man at the back table snatched his glowing phone up and read the text, his frown deepening a little as he flopped back against the cushions, fingers tapping in frustration. Arranging an easy smile in place, Face edged along the wall and prepared for the culmination to the evening.

 

“Hi!” the man in the seat startled, he hadn’t noticed Face coming up on his left until it was too late, his eyes had been fixed on the door at the back of the room.

 

He glanced up and then glanced away again, “Yeah. No thanks buddy, I’m waiting for someone.”

 

“You’ve been waiting quite a while I see,” Face gestured to the empty coffee cups. “Maybe I could keep you company in case he bails on you? We could catch up on old times. After all, I was pretty shocked to see you sitting there I can tell you.”

 

It was almost comical the way the man’s head swivelled Face’s way after that and how he pressed himself more tightly into his dead end corner. Face smiled pleasantly as panicked eyes ran over his features and then widened in shock. “Peck?” Face found it hard not to laugh at the way his name came out as a gasp. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

 

“Ah, you know,” Face’s smile was disarming and open. “Having a little R&R, kicking back, chilling out. It’s amazing,” he leant in conspiratorially, “after you’ve been sold down the river and tortured, you really feel like a few days away.” Brown flew to his feet at that, or at least tried to; trapped like he was by the booth and the table top he only succeeded in jumping up and crashing back down again as Face watched him, an amused smile playing over his lips. “Yeah. Pretty hemmed in there, aren’t you, bud?”

 

“What do you want?” Brown’s hands were shaking as he wiped the sweat from his upper lip. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?”

 

“Ordering coffee,” Face replied pleasantly, smiling at the waiter who came their way. “Alqahwat alzzuhr, min fadlik.”

 

Brown went to stand again, his mouth opening in what would surely be a plea to the waiter for help, but nothing came out of his mouth other than a garbled yelp as Face stamped on his foot and he crashed back into his seat. The waiter eyed them both warily, Face continued his best disarming smile and eventually, empty espresso cups on his tray, the waiter wandered back to the bar.

 

“That was rude,” Face’s smile wavered slightly as he watched Brown trying to writhe away from him in the booth. “Do that again and I might have to kill you.”

 

“You wouldn’t dare,” Brown had become rigid at Face’s words. “Not in a public place like this. You wouldn’t get out again.”

 

Face smiled and leaned back in his seat. “Oh, I don’t know. Depends how motivated I am. After all, I know more ways to kill a man than you could think of to betray your country.” The waiter arrived back at that, delivering Face’s coffee and fussing about with the cup and the napkin whilst Face quietly conversed with him and Brown looked like he was trying not to vomit.

 

Finally, they were left alone again and as Face sipped, Brown leant a little closer to him. “Look,” his voice was low, urgent and Face leaned in to hear a little better. “Be smart about this, Peck. What the hell you doing in the Army? What do they ever do for you except expect you to go out there and get shot for them, _killed_ for them?”

 

“Tortured for them,” Face added mildly and Brown nodded.

 

“Exactly! So, why don’t you tell them where to shove it?”

 

Face regarded him levelly. “Go on.”

 

“I have money,” Brown whispered urgently. “ _Lots_ of money-”

 

“How much?”

 

“What?”

 

“How much money? Exactly? Do you have?”

 

For a moment, Brown only blinked. “Two million dollars. Approximately.”

 

Face leaned away and blew out through his teeth. “Wow. That is a lot, that the going rate for betraying your country, then?”

 

“Fuck you,” for the first time Brown looked more annoyed than anything else. “I’ve done my duty for my country, I’ve worked hard and made sacrifices, just like you! And now I deserve my pay-off!”

 

“But you haven’t been tortured, right?” Face’s voice was still light, easy, however, he knew there was an edge to it that he’d never be able to soften. “You’ve never been strung up in the middle of a room and sliced apart, made to bleed and writhe in silence whilst some sadistic old pervert jacks-off to the fun of it all at the other side of the room?” Brown just stared at him. “You’ve never had bleach sprayed onto your skin, _into_ your flesh, whilst your friend has had to watch, knowing that if he ever does anything to stop it then thousands of people will die? You never spent a day like that?”

 

“That wasn’t my fault,” Brown’s voice was a rough whisper and Face drew back, frowning.

 

“No? Well, who the fuck else set us up and hung us out to dry then? ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t see a line forming here.”

 

“The Army!” Brown hissed. “The Government! They were happy for you to go in there, risk yourself like that and that’s what I’m telling you! Fuck them, go your own way! I have money, plenty of money and I can redirect some your way, make you independent from them all. Let you have the life you deserve.”

 

Face watched him a moment. “How much?”

 

“What?”

 

“How much would you give me to just walk away right now? Leave you alive?”

 

Brown tried not to let Face see his shudder. “Twenty thousand.”

 

Face laughed.

 

“Forty?”

 

He laughed louder.

 

“Fifty?” and now Brown was getting angry. “Hell, think of it! How much does the army pay you a year?! Think what you could do with fifty thousand dollars!”

 

Face cut his laughter in a moment. “I want all of it.”

 

“ _What?_ ”

 

“You heard me, dick-wad. All of it. You need to give me all of your ill-begotten gains or I’ll kill you right here. Leave you to sit in a pool of your own traitor’s blood.”

 

Brown was back to being speechless but then he obviously remembered something and he licked his lips, sliding his fingers out to rest on his phone. “Look, Peck, I’m gonna cut you a break here, let you get out of this unscathed as I do feel a little – bad – that you had a rough time of it out there.”  Face folded his arms and limited his reaction to that statement to raising a single eyebrow. “I’m meeting someone here. Someone who’s gonna help me get away from this whole damn place, head somewhere a little safer.”

 

“Oh, yeah. I heard the guys who bank-rolled your little _enterprise_ were more than pissed that they hadn’t got the end they’d paid for.”

 

Brown flushed but otherwise ignored him. “He’s coming here and he’s one hell of a mean mother-fucker. I wouldn’t want to be you when he gets here…”

 

“Yeah?” Face pulled his own phone from his pocket and started tapping at the screen. “He gonna save you is he? Like some fucking damsel in distress?”

 

The flush deepened. “He’s muscle. It’s what people like me need to get the job done.”

 

“People like you? Pussies you mean?”

 

Brown was saved from answering by the screen on his phone lighting up and he snatched it from the table top, the tremor in his hand obvious. “That’s him now and you’ve lost your chance, Peck. His first job for me is gonna be to wipe you out. You got that? You should have taken the money and run. Yeah?” he barked into his phone. “What is it? You here now?” He listened intently a moment and then frowned, the feedback was piercing. “Where the hell are you?”

 

“Right here, ass-hole.”

 

It was frightening, the speed with which the blood drained from Brown’s face as he looked from his phone to the man sitting at his side and back again, three or four times. Eventually, Face took pity on him and held up his own phone, currently connected to Brown’s with the contact, ‘Ass-Wipe’ displayed. He ended the call as Brown continued to gape and put away his phone. “Damn internet, hey, Bartholomew? Makes it so freaking easy to pretend to be someone you’re not. Or someone you are – and you were right – about me being a mean mother-fucker, I mean.” His beatific smile was wasted on Brown who just seemed to lose it, getting to his feet and shoving at Face in a blind panicked attempt at escape.

 

“Hey, hey!” Face shoved him back again. “Stop drawing attention to us! You want me to just kill you here?” Brown’s eyes widened at the knife that Face was holding next to his thigh and he stilled. “Yeah, thought not. Now, since we seem to have finished our coffees,” he quickly drained what was left of his, “we really need to go. And we’re going to do it nice and calmly. You got that?”

 

Brown nodded tightly and Face started sliding out of the booth. “Good. Now, don’t forget I’m still real interested in all that cash you’ve got stashed away somewhere, so play this right and we’ll both get to see the sun rise.”

 

Slowly, they headed towards the door, Face with his hand tightly around Brown’s bicep, the knife pressed close to his waist. There was a sticky moment when the bouncer looked their way as they were leaving and Face felt Brown tense as if he were going to start screaming for help or something, but then a car-horn sounded outside, the bouncer looked away and the moment was gone.  

 

They walked down the street a little way, Face’s fingers still tight on Brown’s arm, and then Face steered them into a dark and decidedly dangerous looking alley way – the place where he intended to finish off his evening’s activities.

 

“Right, then, Bart. What happens next is-”

 

Face’s words vanished along with the air in his lungs and the elbow in his gut. He recoiled in agony as that flying joint landed plumb in one of his more stubbornly-healing cuts and, as Brown made a dash for the alley entrance, he conceded that he may have been a bit sloppy in underestimating how much spunk the little bastard had. Or how desperate he was…

 

Either way, it didn’t matter. Face’s better acceleration and a rather fortunately slippy-something under Brown’s feet meant that Face could catch up with him before he could even _smell_ the fresh air of freedom and in three very satisfying minutes, it was all over: Face, only ever so slightly out of breath, standing over Brown’s moaning form as he writhed in the slippy-something that had been his undoing.

 

“I’m bored of this now,” Face told him, and he was. That blow to the gut had probably popped a couple of stitches again and also evaporated any fun he’d been having in messing with the unfortunate ex-agent. “I guess this is goodbye.”

 

Reaching under his shirt, Face took out his sidearm and pointed it squarely in-between Brown’s too-wide eyes. “You’re a treacherous, scheming, bastard,” he told him calmly. “You didn’t care about what you were doing to us, those people you would have drowned in the valleys or the thousands who might have suffered as half the world was pitched into war. All of this has been about money. That’s all. You really are the scum of the earth.” Brown made a noise that might have been a whimper or a sob. “It would have been far more fitting to string you up and draw pretty patterns on you with my knife, but lucky for you that type of thing doesn’t float my boat. Instead, you get this,” slowly, loudly, Face flicked the safety off his weapon. “Adios, mother-fucker.” He held his aim steady, just long enough to ascertain that, yes, it was _whimpering_ that Brown was doing before he spoke again. “He’s all yours, boys, come and get him.”

 

There was possibly the count of twenty when Brown huddled and whimpered and Face stood stock still, his aim never wavering an inch and then the alleyway was alive with people. Suit-wearing people who threw wary glances Face’s way and made sure they kept their distance from him as they bundled Brown to his feet. Face waited until the clearly terrified man was shackled before he flicked the safety back on and put his weapon away and then just watched in silence as – as fast as it had filled – the alley emptied again.

 

As the men left, so did all of Face’s adrenalin and he slumped against the wall, closing his eyes, listening to his pulse thump in his ears and wasn’t at all surprised when a deep voice sounded at his elbow. “Feel better now, kid?”

 

Face cracked an eyelid at Hannibal’s quietly amused expression and forced out a dry smile of his own. “Yeah. No. Maybe. I dunno…” He’d thought he would, thought that putting Brown in his place, watching him get carted away to face up to what he’d done would have been satisfying for him. It wasn’t though, not really. He still had that same feeling of how he should have done _better_ ripping through him. Still felt his cheeks heat in shame as he remembered what had happened to him, what he’d allowed to happen…

 

“Hey,” Hannibal’s hand was on his cheek, no doubt feeling the heat from his blush. “Don’t over think this. You will feel better – I promise. Did that bastard hurt you at all? Seemed to catch you with his elbow there.”

 

Face felt a flash of annoyance that Hannibal had been close enough to watch it all, that listening through the wire hadn’t been enough for him but he didn’t have the energy to take it any further. “I’m okay.”

 

“Can I see?”

 

He let out a long breath, “Sure.”

 

Hannibal’s fingers were cool on his heated flesh as they lifted his shirt and pressed and prodded around his belly, then they went to the transmitter tucked into his pocket and he felt the wires being pulled out and again that flash of shame reared up inside him – he’d forgotten he was still transmitting. The fingers were gone then and instead warm lips were pressed to his as he lay back against the wall. “It’s fine,” the concern was clear in Hannibal's voice. “Must have hurt but no lasting damage.” Face didn’t answer. He was suddenly exhausted and felt those lips against his once more. “Come on baby, let’s go.”

 

He let himself be led out into the main street and away in silence until he noticed the direction they were headed in and stopped, turning on the spot in confusion. “Boss, cabs are that way,” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “This is the way to the beach.”

 

“It is,” Hannibal took his hand. “And the hotel I’ve booked us into. Two nights. Thought we deserved a break.”

 

Face let himself be pulled along as he mulled this over. “Two nights, huh?” He loved that Hannibal could still surprise him like this. “What about Baracus and Murdock?” They had been due back from Kabul the day that Face and Hannibal had left for Aqaba and he knew that Hannibal's fledgling team wouldn’t survive much longer if they continued to spend so much time in different countries from each other.

 

Hannibal threw him a shifty look and the grip on his hand tightened which prepared Face for the words before they came. “They’re on their way here. Some R&R of their own. I figured we could have one night to ourselves, one night as a team.”

 

It wasn’t what Face would have chosen in a million years; an evening with Baracus glaring at him and Hannibal strictly off limits was never his idea of fun. “Sounds great,” but he was nothing if not a team player. The squeeze of his hand told him that Hannibal was neither stupid nor unsympathetic.

 

They walked on in silence until Hannibal lead him towards the huge marble and glass atrium of a smart looking beach-front hotel. “Hannibal,” Face found his feet dragging to a dead stop as he stared, “you didn’t have to put us in such a nice hotel.”

 

“Are you kidding me?” Face’s eyes had swivelled at that exclamation and had been surprised to find no trace of humour at all in Hannibal's expression. “After what we’ve been through, _you’ve_ been through,” he corrected himself, “I felt it was the very least we deserved.”

 

Face felt himself flush once more but stepped forward, rising on his toes just the inch he needed and kissed Hannibal firmly on the lips. “Thank you.”

 

Catching him before he could step back, Hannibal prolonged the kiss just a little more, “You’re welcome.” They smiled at each other before heading for the huge bank of doors and Face conceded to himself that maybe things _would_ be alright between them after all. Maybe Hannibal was right and they could work through it all, Baracus, everything. Maybe it would even be worth it in the end, what had happened in Iran, all the stress he’d been through recently, if every mission from now on in could end like _this_.

 

He felt Hannibal's hand squeeze his as they walked into the air-conditioned cool – maybe.  

 


End file.
